Ink Blending on Brown Cardstock – Thank you Cards

For my project today, I used a set of layering stencils that work together to create 4 card fronts! I wanted to ink blend on some brown cardstock, and the Lessebo Taupe cardstock was the perfect color. For these particular stencils, you need to start with a 8″ x 10.5″ piece of cardstock, so that was what I cut this down to.

I work on a glass mat, so I used a little bit of repositionable adhesive to stick my cardstock down to my glass mat.

These stencils have registration marks that help you line up each stencil perfectly (the little squares you see on top and bottom of the stencil).

Since I’m working on a glass mat (and my paper is already stuck down to the mat), I used a sharpie to color in those squares so I can line up the other stencils when I’m done. A glass mat is great for this, because you can just use some rubbing alcohol to wipe off the sharpie when you’re done!

When working on darker colored cardstock, you can ink blend right on it, but if you are using dye inks the ink will also be tinted by the color of cardstock you are working on. I wanted my blue to be brighter and more true to color, so a good trick to that is to put down a layer of white ink before you go in with your color. I find that pouncing white ink on works better than using a brush and going in a circular motion.

The white ink will require longer to dry, and if you’re impatient (like me!) you can use a heat tool to help speed up the process. Just be careful as your paper will warp a bit if using a heat teal and it may make it harder to line up the registration marks on your stencils. I also took the stencil off after I used the white ink so that I could clean that off before going in with my blue ink.

Once the white ink was dry, I put the stencil back on and pounced on some blue ink.

See how that blue pops! I did wipe the sponge tool off on some paper towels before going back to my blue ink pad, because even though the white ink is dry, the tool might still pick some of it up when pouncing on the blue ink.

Once that blue layer was done and dry, I went in with the next stencils to complete the panels.

One of the things I love to do with layering stencils, is to use some sort of paste on the last layer! I used some golden metallic paste on the last layer of the stencil and it is so beautiful when it dries!

To finish off these panels, I die cut some flowers and foliage from the Pearlized Textured Jetstream Blue cardstock and adhered those to the front of the panels along with a sentiment. I die cut the sentiments from the Lessebo Taupe Cardstock and ink blended just the bottom half of the sentiment with a darker brown to give it some dimension. I adhered each panel to an A2 card – I used the A2 Precut and Prescored 110# card bases – I LOVE THESE! If you make a lot of cards, you need these in your stash! They are so quick and convenient and such a nice heavy weight for a card base.