I’m so excited to be a guest designer for Maker Forte, and today I have a card with an ink blended holiday scene to share with you!
The winter holidays are some of my favorite times of the year. There is magic in the air, and you get to celebrate and spend time with family and friends. One of my favorite holiday traditions is sending out Christmas cards; it’s even more fun to make them.
Maker Forte has a ton of great supplies for this, and I’m going to walk you through one of the cards I made using the stamp set “Oh What Fun,” a collaboration with Alex Syberia.
There are so many options with this stamp set. You can do ornaments or set up a winter scene like I did with this card. I also used the limited edition Rebellion Red 65lb card stock. It’s a great color for Christmas cards; they have many other paper colors to choose from at www.Makerforte.com.
Next I cut a piece of white card stock to do some ink blending.
I love making my own backgrounds with inks, you can really get some great effects, and it’s super easy also a little bit messy. Here’s the finished product:
One thing to point out when using pigment inks or oxide inks, you need to be sure they are completely dry, especially if you are going to do any heat embossing like I did for my card. If they aren’t completely dry, you can mess up your project. I thought my project was completely dry, but it wasn’t quite there yet, and you can see in the picture below what happens.
Mistakes are part of the process, well, at least part of my process. Once my project was completely dry, I started on the rest of the elements of my background.
As you can see in the next picture, I ink blended another card because I wanted “snow” at the bottom to build the scene. I also added some “snow” effects to my card by splattering white gouache mixed with water. I used a number 6 paintbrush, but you can also use an old toothbrush for an even finer texture. After the splatter was dry, I mounted it on Rebellion Red card stock for a little pop of color. I used red on the bird as well.
Next was coloring all the images for my card. I’m still learning the art of coloring using Copic markers. Coloring is a challenge for me, and I’m not the best at it, but practice makes perfect. I use one tip when I’m coloring images for a card because I always stamp multiple images in case I mess up. This way, I don’t have to stop, go back and restamp another image and wait for the ink to dry before I start coloring again.
I also googled winter birds, not that it matters, but I wanted to make sure the bird’s color was something that you would see in winter. But you do you, and color the bird any color you want; it’s your project 🙂
Next, I add the images to the card without any adhesive, so I can plan my card’s layout. I always like to think in dimensions with I’m planning my layout. I like things to pop up on my cards. You can see in this picture that the trees are popped up using foam squares. You can use foam tape or cut multiples of the same image stack and glue them together for dimension.
When working with any white surface on your card, you want to make sure to ground your images. You can see the very faint grey marks under the trees. This is so the images don’t look like they are floating on air – probably fine for the bird, but trees don’t usually fly 🙂
At this point, I thought that the card needed more snow in the form of snowflakes included in this stamp set. So I heat emboss three snowflakes using sparkling white embossing powder.
Now it’s time to add the bird and the sentiment. I wanted to sentiment to pop, so instead of stamping it directly on the card, I used the Rebellion Red card stock to make a sentiment strip. I thought it would be fun to stamp it three times like it’s being sung in the song.
To make sure it’s even, I measured out the space for each line and drew a light pencil line so that I’d know it was evenly spaced. After I heat embossed the sentiment, I used an eraser to erase the lines. I cut it and adhered it to the card. I also added some shadow grounding underneath the bird. For the finishing touch, I added a few sequins. Everything needs a little sparkle, right? Here’s my final card.
This was so much fun, and I hope you enjoy this ink blended holiday scene. Check out all the great stamp sets at www.makerforte.com to create your own Holiday Magic. I wish you a very blessed and joyful holiday season.
Enjoy this ink blended holiday scene? Find more scene ideas here!
