Hi there! I am up on the Pinkfresh Studio YouTube channel today with this fun video sharing tips on how you can get beautifully vibrant results blending colorful dye inks on colored cardstock. You can watch the video below:
Or watch the video HERE on YouTube.
Colored cardstock is basically one of my most favorite things about cardmaking (as my ridiculously expansive collection of colored cardstock would attest)… there’s just something so beautiful and luxurious about richly colored cardstock, and we all know my love of monochromatic layers. I adore layering up as many monochromatic components as I can, creating a seamless feel to my card. I’ve come up with lots of fun hacks for coloring on my colored cardstock or adding color around the edge of my die cut pieces. Sometimes, though, time only permits me to do simple and quick techniques, and layered stenciling is such a great way to create impressive, custom-colored looks without getting my art supplies out. To use colorful dye inks with colored cardstock, I have a secret weapon for keeping those colors rich and vibrant: white pigment ink!
Before blending the colorful inks on my minty cardstock, each solid layer of the stencils first gets an even layer of white pigment ink, blended using a blending brush (or foam blending tool) that I have dedicated solely to white pigment ink. When blending colorful inks on colorful cardstock, it’s important to remember your color theory from kindergarten: which primary colors, when mixed together, will create which secondary colors? I.e.-red+yellow=orange, red+blue=purple, etc. For example, when choosing my coral and pink inks for this card, I knew that the base colors for the minty cardstock were made up of blue+yellow+white, and that would mix with the red+yellow of the coral to make a muddy mess. The colors certainly would not remain true. That’s where the white pigment ink comes into play. The pigment ink is a heavier formulation and does not sink down into the cardstock the way dye ink does, and so it creates a barrier when you blend your colorful ink over the top, preventing the colors from the ink from mixing with the colors of the cardstock and allowing them to stay true.
I had previously hot foiled the Celebrate and Nested Arches onto the minty cardstock using matte platinum hot foil, so I heat embossed my new Artistic Dahlias stamp set onto a panel of that same minty cardstock using coordinating platinum embossing powder, then used the coordinating stencils. I added the white pigment ink on all of the solid stencils first, wiped away any excess white ink to keep my ink pads clean, then blended the colorful inks over the top. The results are so beautifully vibrant! I even used the white pigment ink on the minty green leaves before applying the minty green ink; without it, the mint cardstock would simply have been made into a darker shade of green, rather than maintaining the light and airy feel of the pale minty foliage. I die cut the finished pieces with the handy-dandy one piece die.
To add some interest to the background, I die cut a frame using the Rounded and Braided Rectangle frame dies from an A2 panel of the same minty green cardstock, which merely pierced a die cut design . I die cut the Nested Arches hot foiled piece using the coordinating die. I also die cut the hot foiled Celebrate using the coordinating die. I arranged the die cuts on the card front and adhered them with a variety of foam tape (single and double layer) and liquid adhesive to create lots of dimension and varying heights. I find various heights to help add interest to a monochromatic card like this, bringing out the details and textures of the different elements. Finally, I added a few Champagne Glitter Drops for some sparkle!
Well, that’s all for my card today! I hope you enjoyed this technique. It’s not my typical watercoloring video, but it was lots of fun to create! Thanks so much for reading, and have a marvelous day.
Lovely card, Emily!