Bokeh Backgrounds

Tracey McNeely is our Muse over at The Muse Challenge #211 this week and she used a rainbow of colors along with the Altenew Halftone Circles Stamp Set. I'm not sure why, but this made me think of a Bokeh Background so that is what I made.

I started with a panel of Canson Bristol Watercolor Paper and ink blended a background using Cracked Pistachio, Salty Ocean and Mermaid Lagoon Distress Inks. It was done very randomly with no rhyme or reason to how I did it.  I used the Studio L2E Bokeh Builder Stamp Set from Simon Says Stamp plus some "guts" from some Stampin' Up stamps that I kept.  That is where the large circle came from.  The rest are in the Bokeh Builder Stamp Set.  You should always start with the largest circle and work your way to the smallest. Also, there will be fewer of the large circles and they should increase in number as your circles get smaller.  I hope that makes sense. I used Brilliance Moonlight White Pearlescent Ink to stamp all the circles since it would dry faster than White Pigment ink plus I helped it along a bit with my heat tool *Ü*.  Making a Bokeh Background was one of the first techniques I tried when I started making cards 18 months or so ago and I was pretty tickled when it worked how I thought it would.  I think that gave me the confidence to try other techniques even though sometimes they fail.  I also still love the dreamy look.

For the butterfly, I layered the solid image behind the open image.  I used a scrap of vellum to cut it that had been inked up with Altenew's Ocean Waves Ink for another project that you can see here.  I put a touch of Wink of Stella in all the openings to give the butterfly that shimmer that is so often present when you see a butterfly in real life.

The leaves are a Spellbinders Die called Romantic Vines that I found at my Hobby Lobby Store yesterday and used my 40% off coupon for.  I've actually never seen anything there before that was "new" to me and I loved this on sight. I loved it even more after I cut it the first time and saw that I didn't have to make a 2nd pass in my die cut machine to get the embossed detail. A single pass for cutting anything is always good.

It's been a while since I've had time to participate in the Muse Challenge.  If you came from there, thanks for stopping by to see my card and thanks to those who come by regularly.  I hope you'll all come back again another time.