Polka Dot Orchard ~ Beary Best Friend ~ Technique Thursday

Hello there crafty friends!

Today, I'm sharing a fun and easy technique for Technique Thursday with Polka Dot Orchard... a little ink blending with some splatter! Let's get to it, shall we?!

I'm starting with a piece of Tim Holtz Distress Watercolor card stock. You can ink blend on any card stock really. I chose this card stock because I know I'll be doing a some water splatter and it works better on this card stock. I lined up my piece of card stock on my Glass Media Mat so that I can get a straight line for my horizon using the purple tape.

Once I had the tape on, I could pull up the card stock and position it at an angle... I have found this position to be most comfortable for me when ink blending. 

I thought this would be a great time to share my foam storage for my blending tools. I can't take credit for this idea... a crafty friend shared this idea with me. Some dvd style stamp cases, a few labels and velcro circles... I love it!! And I keep it on my shelf right next to my desk... super handy!!

I decided on Tumbled Glass, Wilted Violet, and Faded Jeans Distress Oxide inks to blend for my night sky background. There are so many awesome combos for night sky ink blends though.

I started by ink blending the Tumbled Glass along the tape line. I went up about an inch... maybe an inch and a quarter. And then I ink blended some of the Wilted Violet. I started blending it just above the Tumbled Glass and worked my way up and then down over the Tumbled Glass. I typically go over my blends at least three times to get a good blend. 

I went back in with the Tumbled Glass over the Wilted Violet just to lighten the harsh line between the colors.

And then I blended the Faded Jeans on the top and worked my way down into the Wilted Violet.

I went back in with the Wilted Violet over the Faded Jeans and the Tumbled Glass until I was happy with the blends. In this picture the colors look much lighter than they are in real life, but it shows the blends so nicely.

It is so cool to pull the tape off and see that stark white strip underneath. Be careful when pulling the tape up though... move in one direction and pull slowly. On a clean piece of card stock like this there shouldn't be an issue pulling it up but when you put purple tape on card stock with Distress Oxide inks blended in, you'll want to be sure that the ink is dry and then still be very careful pulling up the tape. I share this from experience. I didn't want quite this much white space so I re-positioned the tape and ink blended some more of the Tumbled Glass ink. I kept it a bit lighter and I like the line it created... like the horizon in the distance.

Time for some water splatter!! I have a tiny spray bottle on my desk and for this technique I squirt some water right into the palm of my hand... probably four squirts. I rubbed my hands together just slightly and then clapped over my panel.

If you use more water you are more likely to get bigger droplets on your panel. It also depends on how close your hands are to the panel. I wanted mostly tiny droplets so I only did a little bit of water and kept my hands higher up from the panel.

Let the water do it's magic for a few seconds while you grab a paper towel. I usually fold the paper towel in half and lay it on top and press gently with my hands.

I love the subtle splatter that water gives to the ink blended backgrounds, but white acrylic paint is one of my favorite ways to add a snowy white splatter. I added a tiny drop of Apple Barrel White acrylic paint to my well loved palette.

I added a few squirts of water to the paint. Watering down the paint helps to thin out the paint so you can get those tiny splatters like snow on your projects.

I mixed it all up with my cheap watercolor brush that I took from my kids watercolors. Shhh... don't tell them I have it! lol

And then grabbed my splatter box... an old box that I've lined with paper towels in the bottom. 

I then just tap my paint brush with my index finger over the panel and get all kinds of fun splatter. You can play with this technique too... getting your brush really wet or holding your hand closer to the panel can also get you bigger droplets. A less wet brush or your hand placement further from the panel will get you tiny droplets. It's lots of fun to play around and see what kinds of splatter you can create! One of my favorite techniques!

I had combined and resized these digi images from the Beary Best Friend digi set by Polka Dot Orchard to fit on an A2 card base for another projects, but decided to use them for this one instead.

I colored the image with the following Copic markers:

Bear ~ N0, N1, R00, R14, R20, R29, R83, C00, C1, Colorless Blender

Fox ~ R00, R20, R83, E0000, E00, E95, E99, B000, B00, B02

Bird ~ N0, N1, N2, N4, R00, R20, R83, YG11, YG13, C00, C1, Colorless Blender

Holly ~ G000, G24, G46, R00, R14, R29

Present ~ R00, R14, R29, Y06, Y11, Y15

I fussy cut the colored image and trimmed down the sentiment. I'm thinking I like this placement for my image and sentiment, but it needs something!

And the finished card! I decided to trim the panel down to 5-3/8 x 4-1/8" and adhere it directly on the A2 white card base. I also mat the sentiment with a slightly larger white mat. I popped up the image and the sentiment with foam tape... I love the extra dimension it gives to the card!

A close up of the card... love how this sweet card turned out!! I hope that you've enjoyed my first Technique Thursday post for Polka Dot Orchard... I had a blast!! I hope that I've inspired you to try out ink blending and splattering! If you have any suggestions for techniques that you'd like to see, comment and let me know... maybe your suggestion will be featured next time!

Thanks so much for stopping by!

See ya next time.

Inky Hugs,

Crystal

It's a Blogiversary Celebration ~ Day 3 of Technique Tutorials

Hello, again! It's our third day of technique tutorials and today I'm going to show you how to make a Galaxy Background. I'm sure you've seen these beautiful backgrounds!! I love them! Let's get started!

First, I pulled out four distress inks for this technique - Black Soot, Dusty Concord, Seedless Preserves, and Picked Raspberry. I also grabbed two blending tools and a piece of white card stock from Papertrey Ink. You are also going to want to work on a surface that you can wipe clean or one that you can replace like my grid paper pictured.

I started with the lightest color, the Picked Raspberry. I got my blending tool nice and inky, but to avoid an obvious circle when I start blending I dab the sponge off once. Now with a circular motion I lightly blended some ink in the center of the card stock. 

Now onto the next color, Seedless Preserves... I got the blending tool nice and inky, and then with the same circular motion I blended this color around the first color. At this point in the blending it's okay that the color is lighter because we'll be adding more and we don't want it too dark.

Now we'll be basically repeating the last step again with the Dusty Concord ink. This time we'll blend ink all the way around to the outer edge.

Now, onto the Black Soot ink... with the same circular motion, I just blended the black ink around the outer edges. 

Now I did the same things again... I blended a bit of the pink in the middle and then added some of the lighter purple blending it a bit more with the pink. I went back over with the darker purple blending it into the lighter purple and into the outer black edges. I also did a little bit more blending with the black on the edges but it really didn't need much.

For some reason, this is my favorite part... haha!.. the water splatter!! I sprayed just a little bit of water in my hand and then clapped my hands over the paper. I let it set for just a few seconds and then laid the paper towel on the card stock to soak up any excess. Since I'm not using watercolor paper, I've found that it's important to use the paper towel to soak up that excess water. Otherwise, the card stock could warp and that would just be terrible after all that work blending the inks. 

Now, I grabbed my palette... it's well loved, but clean. Haha! I added just one little drop of white acrylic paint. That's it, just one tiny drop!

I then sprayed that little tiny drop of paint with a little bit of water. Not too much, just enough to make it easy to splatter.

For this technique I just use a cheap paint brush. One that my kids would use for their watercoloring. Nothing fancy at all... I used the brush to mix the paint with the water.

I love to splatter so I have a box just for this purpose. I keep a paper towel in the bottom of my splatter box to catch the extra wet stuff. It may be time to change out this paper towel. :) I placed my card stock in the box and grabbed the palette.

Now, the fun part... splatter!! I dipped my paint brush in the mixture and flicked it. You'll see that some of the splatter is bigger and some is teeny tiny... that all depends on how wet your paint brush is and/or how hard you flick the paint brush. You may want to practice this step on some scrap pieces before trying it on your background.

After doing the paint splatter, I set it aside and let it dry. I think in this picture you can see that after the paint dried, the white splatter is a bit brighter.

Now for the card I created using the Galaxy Background... I love it!! I die cut the background using the Blueprints 31 dies from My Favorite Things. I adhered that to a True Black card base and set it aside. I have just been itching to ink up this new owl stamp from Unity called Everyday Wonderful Owls. Isn't it the cutest!! I colored it in using Copic markers {0, N0, N1, N3, N4, E95, E99, V05, V06, V09, Y06, Y11, Y13, Y15, Y35} and then I fussy cut it out. I then stamped the sentiment from Unity's February 2017 Kit of the Month called Unexpected Places in VersaMark ink and heat embossed it in white. I die cut that piece using the Blueprints 14 die that just happens to be a part of my giveaway mentioned on my Happy Blogiversary post. I adhered the sentiment and the owls to the card and then decided to add a few drops of Violet Galaxy Nuvo Crystal Drops. 

And there you have the final technique tutorial for my Blogiversary Celebration!! Thank you so much for joining me for these tutorials. I've had a lot of fun doing them for you and I do intend on doing more in the future!

Please leave a comment letting me know what you thought and if you haven't already, click on the Follow button on the right hand side so you won't miss my next post... it just may be another technique tutorial!! 

 Did you comment on my Happy Blogiversary post for your chance to win a prize?!  Check out the details ---> here! Today is the last day to enter!!

If you missed the first technique tutorial, you can find that ---> here.

And the second technique tutorial can be found ---> here.

Thanks for stopping by!

See ya next time.

~ Crystal