Easy Ink Blending Techniques - AECP

I just finished my sixth course in the AECP Level 1 Course work.  This class was on ink blending techniques.  I have seen a lot of ink blending but haven't really done a lot of it myself.

The first card I created I used a couple of techniques - one was the ink blended background and the other was to ink blend after embossing an image with clear embossing powder - this is called emboss resist.  I used the Craft Your Life - Sunshine Flowers stamp.  I used the Sunshine Flowers stencil and blending brushes to ink blend the flower and surrounding leaves.  After getting the colors that I wanted with the ink blending I die cut the floral image.  I added this die cut image over a piece of white cardstock that I blended Alpine Aster color over.  In addition to the ink blending, I die cut the sentiment 'hello friend" out of the flower and out of scrap cardstock an additional 4 times.  I glued all of these together and then inlaid the sentiment back into the original die cut area.  This makes a subtle sentiment and also adds visual interest.

The final step after adhering the floral image and ink blended background to a card base was to lightly spritz with Altenew Antique Gold Metallic Ink Spray.

This is a fun technique and I can see myself using it more and more.

The first part of my homework for this course was to take the inks I have and blend them onto my paper/cardstock to see how the color looks when blended.  

You can see here what colors I have currently.  I chose to only blend out my Altenew Fresh Dye Inks.  I have 70+ other ink colors from other companies -  several years old and needing ink refills (which I have but just have to take the time to refill). I can see myself reaching more and more for these Fresh Dye Inks so I chose to not blend my non-Altenew inks out for now.

Maybe when I am done with my certification...

 A close up of my flower so you can see the gold shimmer from the spray.  Really quite pretty I think.  You can also see how the sentiment pops out of card - a bit harder to see when looking straight on at the card.

For the next part of my lesson I chose to use Craft Your Life Project - Seasonal Blooms.  This homework assignment was to emboss the image in white.  Then I used ink blending to color in all the images on the stamp.  This stamp is one large image that fills up most of the card front.

After I finished ink blending the entire image I spritzed it with water.  I took each of my ink colors and "smooshed" them into an ink blending mat that I have.  I then took a water brush and added a drop of water to each color and then watercolored over my images.  Adding little bits of color here and there - a bit of purple to the big blue sunflowers and a brighter pink to the tulips.  I used the die that is included in this Craft Your Life Project set and cut out the image.

On a separate piece of vanilla cardstock I ink blended using Peachy Keen and Frosty Pink.  And again I smooshed the ink into the mat and used the water brush this time to flick splatters of color on the ink blended background.  

After splattering the ink onto the ink blended background I adhered the die cut floral image onto it and then added both to a pale yellow card base.  I die cut the sentiment from black cardstock and then sprinkled on some sequins.  I find that sprinkling the sequins on really makes for a nice "natural" placement of the sequins and saves me from over thinking the placement.  Such freedom in that sprinkling or spilling.

I really do like the way all of my ink blended projects turned out.

Let me know what you think.