Alcohol Inks on Vellum

 Hey there!  Glad you stopped by.  Have you tried the technique that uses the Stampin'Up! Blends Markers on vellum to make awesome alcohol ink backgrounds?  I was a little leery about trying it, but it was lots of fun.  Kind of messy, but fun anyway!  I have to admit, the first one I tried ended up in the trash.  I spritzed way too much alcohol on the vellum and everything blended into nothingness and the vellum curled up too much to get it flat ever again!  There are wonderful videos out on You Tube that show in detail how it is done.  Not everyone does it the same, so it's interesting to get ideas from several people.  And no matter how you do it, no two finished vellum pieces will ever be identical.  You can look at that as being a creative plus, or it can drive you right up the wall if you want to do multiple cards the same - it just can't happen!

After playing around some, I thought I'd try a background with blues on half and greens on the other half.  So this is it.

I started with a piece of cardstock vellum which is quite thick and SU! sells it.  I used Stampin' Blends in these colors for the greens - Old Olive, Mossy Meadow, and Shaded Spruce.  For the blue colors -  Balmy Blue, Pool Party, Bermuda Bay.  These were all the darker Blends.  

Scribble each of the colors in sections close to each other, but I didn't go over other colors.  I kept them barely separate.  After the colors were scribbled on, spritz with 90% Isopropyl Alcohol.  Don't over saturate like I did the first time!  

I used a Water Painter dipped in more alcohol to dab around in the separate colors to move them and get that awesome alcohol ink look.  I love how the colors moved and changed.  It's just like magic.  Thought it was interesting that the Shaded Spruce in the green area started looking like Bermuda Bay!  

After I liked how it looked, it was set aside to dry a bit.   This is when I realized the Inspiring Canopy dies would work perfectly here.  The trees were die-cut from Early Espresso cardstock and set aside.

When the vellum was dry, I flicked on some marker colors.  I used Pool Party and Bermuda Bay on the sky, and Old Olive and Mossy Meadow on the land areas.   After this I flicked Wink of Stella onto the vellum.  I got very impatient waiting for the Wink of Stella to dry, even used a heat tool to hurry it along.  I stayed sort of sticky.  Hmmm, what about some Gold Leafing???  I played around with that some and found there were some areas that it really stuck on nicely, some areas not so great.  So I've got this lovely designed alcohol vellum background with little speckles and some bigger blobs of brilliant gold - I love it!  What a happy outcome!

The vellum was attached to a Basic White layer using Adhesive Sheets.  This helps to keep the vellum layer nice and flat. The die-cut trees were attached at this time.  The Basic White layer was attached to Bermuda Bay cardstock with adhesive.  Linen Thread was wrapped three times around and then tied in a knot.  Then it was attached to the folded Early Espresso folded cardstock base using Dimensionals.  The last thing to do was cut Basic white cardstock to go inside the card.  I added 1/2" strips of Bermuda Bay cardstock to each side of the white layer inside to give it more color and interest inside the card.

Hope you can see how pretty the alcohol ink looks.  And I just love the bits of  gold leafing on it.  I've got to admit I was kind of scared to try this technique, but I reminded myself - it's only paper!  If you don't like it, pitch it and try again.  I'll have more ideas to share with you soon using more pieces I've already made.  They're much more colorful and I'm trying to figure out what to do with them!  *grins*

If you're planning on placing an order this month, please consider using the Host Code for this month.  Thank you to all you wonderful ladies that are ordering.  I appreciate you so much!

Thanks for stopping and I sure hope you give this technique a try.  It's a real winner and so much fun!

Happy creating!  It's good for the soul.

Many hugs,

Sharon