Wednesday, February 21, 2018

Charming Cafe with Van Gogh Background


I was inspired by Jennifer McGuire's tutorial on watercolour backgrounds using liquid watercolours, to try some of my own using our Stampin' Up! Classic Ink Refills. In particular, I tried two of her techniques. One she called the Drip and Spritz Technique and the other she didn't name but was basically adding drops of liquid watercolour to an already wet cardstock base. That technique was really fun. The Drip and Spritz involved adding drops of dye to a dry watercolour friendly base and spritzing it with water. You get little veins of colour seeping out from the drops you added and it makes for a really interesting background.

I thought they would make a great background for the new Charming Cafe Bundle from the Occasions Catalogue. I was picturing a little French Bistro with a Van Gogh-like sky behind it! Vive le Paris! What resulted was a lovely little CAS thank you card. Here's a closer look:


  • I used Dapper Denim, Emerald Envy and Bermuda Bay Refills on Shimmery White Cardstock, touching the top of the dropper head to the paper as I filled it with a mixture of those colours. You need to work fast so it's a good idea to take the lids off ahead of time. Otherwise, the ink soaks right into the paper before you can spritz it with water and then you don't get the spread of ink that you want. 
  • Right away you spritz the cardstock with water from about 12" away and you will begin to see some really interesting spidery veins coming out from around each drop if it doesn't soak in too much before you start spritzing. If you have trouble with this, there are two things you can do. First you could try to add bigger drops. Secondly, use Glossy White Cardstock. The ink doesn't soak into it nearly as quickly. It does take longer to dry on it, however.
  • I taped my paper down on to a clipboard as well, to keep the warping to a minimum, but it still happened with lots of water usage.
  • On a Whisper White card front, I stamped the little bistro table and chairs from the Charming Cafe stamp set and using the coordinating die from the Cafe Builder Framelits with the window opening to figure out where to stamp them. Then I die cut the window with the outline of the chairs and table with that same framelit.
  • I coloured the chairs and table along with the cups, etc. with Stampin' Blends. The background piece was trimmed down to fit the window (a little larger on all sides) and glued to a same-sized piece of Whisper White to flatten it out. This was adhered inside the card and a liner was added to the inside of the card so that the background piece which is much smaller than the card front wouldn't show.
Here's a quick look at some other backgrounds I made:



I couldn't close my blog today without mentioning my pride at being Canadian and watching Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir win Gold at the Ice Dance Figure Skating competition on Monday! It was their third gold medal of their career, and their last free skate was so passionate and mesmerizing to watch!



Three more Canadian athletes won Gold on Monday as well, two of them from my home province of British Columbia: Cassie Sharpe in Freestyle Skiing Halfpipe and Justin Kripps in Bobsleigh.


Justin Kripps, is from Summerland, a fellow Okanagan Valley resident, and Cassie Sharpe lives on Vancouver Island very near where my daughter lives!

Are you enjoying the Olympics? What sports do you particularly like watching?




Click on the links below to take you to my On-Line Store, where you can read about, look at, and purchase if you wish, the products used to make this card today.

Product List
Big Shot
[143263]
$136.00
Heat Tool
[129053]
$40.00

2 comments :

  1. Wow, this is stunning! I am reminded of the alcohol/ink technique on glossy paper we used to do...might have to revisit that!

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  2. Thanks, LeAnne! I got the idea from Jennifer McGuire's video on liquid watercolour backgrounds. The link is in my post. I just used reinker and water. I experimented with both Shimmery White and Glossy White cardstock. Lots of fun!

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