I've done three other posts about making card backgrounds ahead of time. You can find those HERE, HERE, and HERE. Today is my fourth installment in this series. It's become a "series" because I love doing it this way! Whenever I have a few backgrounds made, I find putting together a card is so much easier and quicker. Plus focusing on creating backgrounds while the Distress Inks are all out is a fun way to spend an afternoon!
Today's focus is going to be on creating scenes for critters with Distress Inks and Distress Oxide Inks and stencils. I'll be using 3 Simon Says Stamp stencils today. Here is a lookie at them with short descriptions - these things are STAPLES in my craft supplies:
This one is called Waves and Hills. I use it for most of my grounds on cards. Instead of using dies to create separate "grounds", this is a less expensive way to create one layer backgrounds. You could just draw these lines on paper and cut them out,but I like having them on a stencil so they are always drawn perfectly.
This one is called Clouds for Days. It is perfect for creating skies on your card backgrounds. The edges of the stencil are perfect for lines of clouds along the sky, while the inside pieces are perfect for adding clouds over backgrounds or drawing clouds and cutting them out
This last one is called Grassy Edges. You can use it to create grass in a straight line or on hills. Again, it allows you to create one layer backgrounds instead of adding a grassy die over your skies.
I used Distress Inks (more light and bright and less opaque) and Distress Oxide Inks (for more opaque less bright backgrounds) on all of these backgrounds. I just recently purchased the set of Picket Fence LIFE CHANGING BRUSHES. They are pricey, so I waited for quite a while to invest in them. Heck, I waited about 4 years before buying a Misti and I have no idea why as it is such a necessity! These brushes have changed my application of inks and I can finally do it without those round edges I always had from the Ranger Blending Tools. They are worth every penny you spend on them if you do ink blending. They blend perfectly and you never get ink edges on your cards!
Now for some of the backgrounds I have created using these stencils and inks and then I'll show you some of the cards I made with the pre-made backgrounds.
These card fronts are made for slim-line cards so they measure 3.5" x 8.5". The stencils obviously don't go all the way across this size card, so I draw a hill using the stencil as a guide and then add the extra width to it and cut it out (you can see it on the bottom of this photo). I then tape that to my background for inking the ground and the sky (just flip it over and it does the opposite part).
These three backgrounds were all made with Distress Inks as they give me a lighter, brighter look. I started with the top one and I used TOO much color for my liking. So I redid it with a lighter hand on the inks and ended with the second one below it. I just hold the cloud stencil over the background while I ink around it and then I move it and hold again to get the right width. I ink the entire surface very lightly first and then I do the clouds over it so there is color on the lightest part of the clouds. Sometimes I leave them pure white, but it gives you more contrast as you will see in some of my other examples. For the grounds, I use two colors of ink - a lighter all over and then a darker just around the edges and here and there so the color varies in intensity.
For these two standard size card backgrounds (4.25" x 5.5") I used Distress Oxide Inks. I used the same two stencils mentioned above, the Clouds and then Waves and Hills. This time, since they aren't slimline, the stencil worked to blog the open edges. I also add sticky tape around the open areas of the stencil so I don't apply ink where I don't want it. When making the edges of the ground, I slightly overlap the sky so there is a little bit of overlap between the two rather than a white spot.
The one on the left was made with Distress Oxide Inks and the one on the right was made with Distress Inks (notice the differences in the ground on both as I used the same colors). For the one of the left, I used white Hero Art Unicorn ink for the clouds over the inked sky. This is the only white ink I have found that dries without smearing and shows up over Distress Oxide Inks. You can see on the pink sky I didn't have my new brushes yet and I used a Ranger Blending tool. See how there ink isn't blended very well? Yeah, I never did learn to master those things!
I used the Grassy Edges stencil for the card on the left with Distress Inks for a nice soft look. I used the Waves and Hills die of the one on the right with Distress Inks also. I tried overlapping several of the different hills and made a mess of it! But I ended up hiding the mistakes on the card I used it on which you will see below.
Here are some of the cards I have made with these backgrounds shows above and some other similar ones. You can see that sometimes I use the entire background and sometimes I just use a portion of it in a shaker or a behind a smaller die.
I hope you noticed that I don't always use blue for the sky and green for the ground. Change it to be whatever colors you want that will best work with your cards and sometimes that means a pink sky and a purple ground! I think it adds to the whimsical feel of some of these cards. I hope you enjoyed this fourth installment of my making backgrounds ahead of time "series". I'll be back later this week with some of the Hello Bluebird cards shown in this post with directions and supplies. Thanks so much for visiting! Suzy
Great ideas, Suzy. I just love everything you do.
Posted by: Diane Hunter | May 28, 2019 at 01:04 PM