Hi everyone, today I have an "icy" card for your all! This card is part of the Summer Coffee Lovers Blog Hop (http://coffeelovingcardmakers.com/2017/06/2017-summer-coffee-lovers-blog-hop/) and cocoa was one of the options: Summer Cocoa for me is a nice (flavoured?) ice cream with a thick layer of chocolate on the outside, like one of the ice creams on this card! And the inside?: have you ever tried ice cream with coffee or matcha flavour? It’s awesome!
I have been watching a couple of “ink smooshing” video’s on You Tube lately and I wanted to try this technique for myself.
I started this card by cutting a panel in the size that I wanted with a stitched rectangle Crea-Nest-Lies XXL die from Canson XL Cold Press watercolor paper. I bought a couple of new stamp sets last week and I saved the plastic packaging they came in so that I could use them for this ink smooshing technique (you can also use a little thicker acetate sheet, what ever you prefer working with, this is what I had so this is what I used). I cut the packaging to a size that was nice to handle. Since I knew I wanted to use a stamp set from Simon Says Stamp called “Ice Cream Dream” for this card I first stamped the sentiment of my choice on the top of the landscape panel with Versafine “Onyx Black” ink (because that ink is waterproof). I did that first because I didn’t wanted to put ink smooshing over the sentiment. Now that I’m prepared I can get started with the fun part!
You can do this technique best with inks that react well with water, like the Distress Inks. I choose three colours for my background that I felt would combine nice together and also would be suitable for a male card: I choose “Twisted Citron”, “Pumice Stone” and “Broken China”.
I started working from the left to the right side of my panel: I put some of the Twisted Citron ink directly to the plastic packaging and spritzed with water from a spray bottle. Don’t overwet the ink, there should be little droplets of water, no water pools. Next you take the plastic sheet, turn it around and apply the ink/water mixture to the watercolour paper in the area that you want it to be, you can work it a bit until you like what you get. You have a bit of control over where you lay down the ink but not 100 %. I didn’t expected to like this technique as much as I did (because I’m a control freak and with this technique you don’t have 100% control) but I really really really enjoyed it, so this will definitely not be the last time that I used this technique on a card!
After applying the first colour I dried the watercolour paper with my heat tool, cleaned my plastic with a paper towel and then I went to the next colour, in my case Pumice Stone an did the same. And, after drying the paper and cleaning the plastic I did the same with the Broken China ink. Because I felt that the left part of my card was a little unbalanced (because the Twisted Citron ink is very bright, compared to the other colours) I decided to put on a little more Pumice Stone to the left side of the card in the same way (be careful not to apply too much because otherwise you will get a muddy colour).
I don’t know what it is about this technique but I really liked it, if you have never tried it, you really should, it’s so much fun! And the best part: you probably already have everything you need in you craft space to get started right away!
Now that my background is ready I can get started with the rest of the card: I stamped al off the bigger ice creams and the cherry from this stamp set on the Canson XL watercolour paper with the Onyx Black ink and started water colouring with the same Distress inks (something I also had never done before but was really a lot of fun: I applied some of the Distress Inks to a stamp block and added water with a regular paint brush to make a lighter colour where needed): because you use the same colours as you used for the background you create a nice balanced card. For my additional colours I used: “Antique Linen”, “Vintage Photo” and “Fired Brick”. After the images dried I free hand cut them out with my Fiskars scissors.
To put this card together I foam taped the ice creams to the ink smooshed panel with one millimetre thick foam tape (to create more dimension) and adhered the cherry to the right ice cream with 3D kit. While drying I cut a bigger panel from dark red card stock in the same colour as the cherry with one of the regular rectangle Crea-Nest-Lies XXL dies and I foam taped the water colour panel to the red card stock with one millimetre thick foam tape and glued the red panel to a cream coloured linen textured card base with liquid glue. Lastly I put some Glossy Accents on the cherry and set it aside to dry!
And that finishes today’s card! I wish you all a creative day!
I would like to submit this card to the following challenge:
- SSS Wednesday Challenge: Use Patterned Paper:
http://www.simonsaysstampblog.com/wednesdaychallenge/simon-says-use-patterned-paper/
- AI Challenge: Create a Background:
http://artimpressionsstamps.blogspot.nl/2017/06/new-funny-farm-clear-stamps-plus.html
