Clear & Sheer - Enhancing Vellum

This week I am in a class over at Online Card Classes with Jennifer McGuire and Kristina Werner called Clear & Sheer.  Lots of new-to-me ideas are being taught by some of my favorite designers, but it was Jennifer's technique from yesterday morning that caught my attention right away and I had to try it. The classes are all about how to use vellum or acetate in your projects and also how to hide the adhesive. This technique uses Dye Based Inks to stain or color vellum.  I love vellum but it is nearly impossible to find colored sheer vellum.  Now I know how to make my own in whatever color or shade I want.

To start this card I took a sheet of Papertrey Ink Stamper's Select Vellum (48#) and cut it in half lengthwise resulting in a sheet that is 4.25 x 11 inches scored at 5.5 inches and two pieces of 4.25 x 5.5 inch Stamper's Select White Cardstock.  This technique will not work with lightweight vellum since the vellum has to be heavy enough to be your front panel and stand on end.

I placed a strip of Post-It Tape across the top aligned with the score line to keep the ink only where I wanted it.  You could use any kind of low tack tape. Honestly, I am not sure it mattered since I hid the part that was above the colored part.  But I did it just to be sure. As you can see, I've used this piece of Post-It tape several times and will continue to do so until it completely loses its tackiness.

Using any kind of dye based ink go Direct To Paper (DTP) and swipe the ink pad across the vellum in the color(s) and pattern(s) you want.  Then take a dry cloth or paper towel and rub it into the paper. This will remove the excess color and moisture from the paper.  I chose to do an Ombre Pattern on two of the cards I made. For the one on the right, I used 5 different Distress Inks.  For the one pictured just below, I used Seedless Preserves and Picked Raspberry Distress Inks.  Once you get the inks blended how you want, set the vellum aside to finish drying while you create the rest of the pieces.  I also used Papertrey Ink Perfect Match Ink Cubes for another card I made as well as some Simon Says Stamp Inks.  Any die based ink will work but pigment inks do not work.

For the next card, I used a single color (Salty Ocean) on the vellum.  To hide your adhesive, just sandwich the vellum layer between two cardstock layers using any strong double sided dry adhesive. How simple is that?  

For all of these cards, I used Papertrey Ink's Bitty Bouquets Stamps & Dies to stamp the Tulip and Rose bouquets in my MISTI.  I really love how I can double stamp with the MISTI in the exact same spot to get the more vibrant color.  The roses are two steps and the tulips are three steps. The butterflies all came from the new Color Pop Butterflies Kit by Betsy Veldman for Papertrey Ink.  The kit came with several pre-printed images that you can just cut out with the dies included in the kit. There is also a stamp set in the kit but I just used the pre-printed images.  

I die cut all of the hearts from the Little B Hearts Designer Dies in the next to the largest size and cut a fun foam heart to go behind from the next size smaller so it would fit behind without showing which allows for some dimensional adhesive. I attached all of the die cut flowers using Ranger Multi Medium Matte.  The hearts came from the Simon Says Stamp Mini Hearts Die which has three different styles in three different sizes each. And y'all know that I gave everything  some Wink of Stella for that extra shimmer. 

The sentiments came from some older stamp sets by Clearly Besotted and Altenew.  I don't have much that is good for Mother's Day but I wanted to get these done, so I made do.  Since I always write a sentiment of my own inside, these worked just fine. 

The Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge this
week is for "Anything Goes" and The Card Concept is a Spring or Floral Theme which I am entering in a Clean & Layered Style.  I hope to be back later in the week with another project or two for some of the other challenges that are going on.  Have a great evening everyone and thanks so much for stopping by.