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.

Beautiful Butterflies

Even though Spring has officially arrived in the US, it hasn't been very warm yet. The the mere mention of the word "Spring" conjures up all kinds of images in one's mind; flowers, blooming trees, baby birds and eventually (along with the warmer temperatures) the butterflies will come.

I love butterflies.  I captured this photo more than a decade ago at at Ranch in Kansas that some friends of ours own.  You see that background?  That's real Bokeh, folks!  And just FYI — it's pronounced bow-kuh not bow-kay. *wink*

Anyway - I love butterflies and I've been to my fair share of Butterfly Gardens & Pavilions to take photographs.  But they will never top this one experience of being in a natural environment and capturing this image.  I can still remember my delight as I knew I had captured what I intended.  I tried to show it to my husband on the little screen at the time but he didn't get it until I could download and show him at home.

I could never paint a butterfly as lifelike as this image and I don't even try although I've seen some pretty fantastic colors on butterflies at some of the pavilions I've been to.  I even have pictures of turquoise and brown ones in my collection.

When I was grade school aged, our house was next to a field or lot that was empty.  We would play all day long out there all summer long making forts in the tall grass or catching butterflies and dusk never failed to bring the fireflies with it.  Those are the childhood memories I treasure with some of my brothers. Seriously, four younger brothers is mostly a pain.  There were five of us kids all pretty close together in age and then one more came along probably just when my mom thought she was finished having babies.

For the first card, I used the Stampendous Pen Patterned Butterflies along with the coordinating die for these cards.  I started by stamping the largest image in Versamark and heat embossing it with Ranger Gold Tinsel Embossing Powder on a piece of Canson Bristol Watercolor Paper.  I stamped the Papertrey Ink Graceful Greetings "Hello" to intersect with the butterfly's antennae.  The butterfly was watercolored using Distress Markers in Weathered Wood, Victorian Velvet, Aged Mahogany, Seedless Preserves, and Abandoned Coral.  Once I had the butterfly all painted and dry, I carefully cut the butterfly from the panel using the coordinating die.  Next I used the same die to cut a piece of Fun Foam to put under the butterfly image and give it some stable dimension.  Then I started assembling everything back together. Starting with a horizontal Berry Sorbet Top Folding Note Card, I attached the negative to the card base.  I attached the fun foam to the back of the butterfly using Ranger Multi Medium Matte.  I stacked several acrylic blocks and a paperweight on top to keep it flat while the glue dried.

Since some of the gold embossed outline was also on the negative as well as the positive piece, I needed to make sure that I had it lined up correctly when I adhered it to the card base.  It was easy to make it fit right in.  I also like it that the Berry Sorbet Cardstock peeks out from underneath.  Using a Quickie Glue Pen, I added a deep purple glitter to the spots on the butterfly wings.  You can't really see it in this photo, but it adds a super wow factor.  Glitter is another one of those supplies that I have that I'm trying to use.

This card uses Weathered Wood, Aged Mahogany, Mermaid Lagoon & Wilted Violet Distress Markers.  I didn't use the negative for this card because I wanted a vertical top folding card.  The background panel is made from Simon Says Stamp Surf Blue Cardstock.  The "Happy Birthday" sentiment is from Papertrey Ink's Graceful Greetings Stamp Set.  There are coordinating dies available.  I used the same purple glitter (Recollections Brand) and Quickie Glue Pen for the spots on this butterfly.  A few sequins finished off both of these cards.

I'll be entering this card in several challenges:  Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge "Beautiful Butterflies", the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge "Make It Girlie", The Paper Players Challenge "Butterflies", Stamping Royalty Challege #326 and Curtain Call "Keep it Simple".  Thanks so much for stopping by today.  I hope you'll come back often.

Let's Bokeh

This week I got my first paid "gig" thanks to one of my sisters-in-law.  It's been a great learning experience for me as I figured out what I could and could not do easily when making cards on request for someone else.  One of the most important things I learned is that the one-of-a-kind cards should stay one-of-a-kind.  But I did learn a few things while trying to replicate a look for someone. Bokeh was at the top of this list and I wanted to share the technique I used.    

Many of you know that I was not a card maker until this year, but bokeh was one of the first things that I tried to do because I saw it on Pinterest and loved the look as much as I did back when I was taking portraits.

Bokeh is a photography term that refers to the quality of the blur on the out of focus objects in an image and how a lens renders those points of light.  Think of those movies or photos that you've seen with tiny Christmas lights in the background that are absolutely magical as in the image above and the two images below.  

This is the look I was trying to mimic today for a background on a card.  I had previously made one so someone was asking me to replicate it.  I had water colored a soft background first and then added the bokeh look on top of that.  I wasn't creating for a specific card; I was only playing to see what I could do. The original had allowed plenty of drying time between layers and eventually I made a card.  But this week I didn't have that much time to let the ink dry.  So here's what I did; first I created a background panel using two different colors of pink applied with a Ranger Mini Ink Blending Tool. I used the lighter shade in the center of the panel and the more vibrant color all around the outside.  I used Dye Inks for this so drying time was next to nothing.  I guess I wasn't sure the ink blending would yield the result I wanted so I did that on a piece of watercolor card stock think I might need to watercolor it, but I didn't need to.  Smooth white card stock would have worked just fine.  I was actually so happy with the ink blending that I created another one in the same way on regular white card stock.

Way back in early spring I had gotten this stamp set from L2E called Bokeh Builder.  If you follow the link you can see there are a variety of sizes in both the solid circular images and the outline images.  I haven't used the outline images yet, but I have them if I need them.  I work from largest to smallest circle size using 3-4 different ones from this set.  I stamp completely at random with no intentional pattern sometimes stamping a smaller circle on top of a larger one.  I always have only a few of the largest circles in comparison to the smaller circles. I use the medium sized circles the most as I think this mimics a lens the best but you need the smaller circles for the proper look and balance.  

Next I needed to speed up the drying time of the white pigment ink so I tried several things.  First I tried plain white embossing powder.  That was too opaque although I tried to use a very light touch.  If you've ever done heat embossing, you know that there is little you can do to control the intensity of the color.  After that I tried some Ranger Antiquities Embossing Powder in Frosted Crystal but I still found this too opaque for my taste.  Finally, I tried using my trusted standby, Simon Says Stamp Clear Embossing Powder.  This was, at last, the look I wanted.  By using embossing powder, I eliminated the drying time normally associated with Pigment Inks.  I have nearly every color of ink that Stampin' Up! offers and I used the Craft White ink for this.  You could use Hero Arts Unicorn White or any other white pigment inks that you might have.   I used what I already had on hand.  I do wish there was an option for a matte finish embossing powder, but I'm okay with this shiny finish for now.    

Dye inks dry so fast that you don't have time to get much embossing powder on them.  While I do use a lot of Versamark Ink, it would not really be suitable for this look.  I actually didn't expect that this technique would work quite as well as it did and I love happy accidents.  

I hope you enjoyed reading about this technique and I'm super happy that I figured out a way to accomplish it within a shorter time frame.  Please feel free to leave me a question or comment.  Thanks for stopping by!