Living My Dream: Making Backgrounds Ahead of Time

I've posted twice before about how I like to make my card backgrounds ahead of time. You can see my first post HERE and my second post HERE. Today is my 3rd Installment of making card backgrounds ahead of time using watercolors, texture paste, stencils, Distress Ink and Distress Oxide Inks. I have a lot of Easter and Spring stamps to use lately (being on SSS, PPP, and Hello Bluebird design teams), so I'm making primarily backgrounds that will work with Spring colors. So let's get started!

WATERCOLORS:

I love painting watercolored stripes on A2 card sizes of Ranger watercolor paper. I use the smooth side of this paper because it is the only true white watercolor paper I've ever been able to find. The price for the paper is best at SSS (much higher at Amazon) and you get 10 pieces of 8.5x11". I then cut those into 4 and use them for my watercolored card backgrounds.

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For my stripes I use either a flat brush (1/4" x 1/2") or a large round brush (12). I used Daniel Smith Watercolors for these above (colors are shown below each), but any watercolor paint will work fine! Sometimes I wet the paper entirely first and sometimes I don't. The stripes done wet on wet bleed into the open areas and are very messy (see the blue one above). The stripes you do on dry paper with a wet brush stay where they are suppose to - haha (see the green above). Often times I splatter paint on the card as well just to add some extra interest. Sometimes I splatter water over the stripes while they are still wet to bleach areas and make it more messy. I love using striped backgrounds for cards as you have probably seen me do often, but here are a couple of examples:

My next two examples of watercolor backgrounds are just wet on wet messy ones I often use (and I make a ton of these ahead of time).

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On these backgrounds above, I used Distress Inks and Distress Oxide Inks to add color. I just wet the cardstock and then pressed the ink pads onto a slippery surface and picked color up with a wet paintbrush. I dropped the color onto the wet watercolor paper until it spread around.

Here is a card made with this type of background:

STENCILS:

stencils

I often use stencils to make backgrounds for my cards. Sometimes I use them with just inks directly over them and other times I use them with texture paste. The four shown above are all by Simon Says Stamp and include Medium Dots, Tiny Dots, Grassy Edges, and Clouds for Days.

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On these backgrounds above, I used an MFT Stencil called Card - Sized Confetti on the middle one. There are two stencils that you use one at a time so the dots are all layered. I used Distress Inks over them. For the one on the left, I used Distress Oxide Inks over a stencil called Waves and Hills to create the pink and green areas. On the one on the right, I used the Tiny Dots Stencil with Distress Ink. The colors I used are shown in this photo below:

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Here is an example of a card using the MFT card - sized confetti stencil:

Next, I wanted to make some backgrounds for scenes with clouds and grass. Beware - these are my first attempts at this technique and I didn't do a very good job. I need more practice!

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I used the SSS Clouds for Days stencil for the clouds on these over Neenah White Cardstock. I used a Ranger Blending Tool and Tumbled Glass Distress Ink. I used the Waves and Hills stencil for the grass on the right one. I used the Grassy Edges stencil for the other two. I tried layering several grassy borders on the ones on the left, but it looks really bad! I'll definitely cover that one up with some cute stamps so no one sees it as is! I used Twisted Citron and Mowed Lawn Distress Inks for the grass on all of these.

STENCILS WITH TEXTURE PASTE:

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For these two above, I used Texture Paste with Distress Oxide Ink rubbed into it to color it. I used Cracked Pistachio on the left and then Tattered Rose on the right. I used the Medium Dots Stencil by SSS.

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For these three I used the SSS Tiny Dots Stencil with Texture Paste. I mixed Twisted Citron with the Texture Paste for the one on the left, Peacock Feathers for the one in the middle and just Texture Paste for the one on the right. Here are all 5 together:

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Here are a couple of cards I've made with this type of background:

DISTRESS OXIDE INKS:

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I love making backgrounds with the gorgeous Distress Oxide Inks and Ranger Blending Tools. For these I used two or three colors of inks either going down from light to dark or one color not he inside and a darker color on the outside edges.

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This photo shows the colors I used for each of the above backgrounds.

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Here are another two backgrounds I made and a card I made using one on the right. For this card (on my last blog post, I stamped over the Distress Ink Background with a light color of ink and then colored the flowers in with colored pencils.

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This photo shows the colors of ink I used on each of the above Distress Ink Backgrounds. Here are a couple of cards I have made using Distress Oxide Inked backgrounds:

That's it for today's installment of making backgrounds ahead of time. I have to say, doing these is probably my favorite part of card making. For some reason I enjoy it way more when I do a bunch at one time as it really let's me focus on them and then having them ready when I need them is such a relief! I like to do this about once every couple months, so I'll be back with another installment soon. I'm sure you will see all of the ones I've shown today on my cards over the next few weeks. Have a great week friends and thanks so much for visiting today! suzy