Irresistible Inking Techniques - AECP Journey

I'm back with my next assignment for my AECP course. This is my 10th and final class for level 1. This class was all about irresistible inking techniques and was taught by Sara Naumann. She is a great and very thorough instructor and we learned some new ways to use your inks, in addition to just inking up your stamps.

ETA....I've lost of my photos when I changed blog host providers, so some posts will have very few photos.

For today's cards I combined 2 of the techniques, that quite frankly, I'm not sure why I've never tried them before, even though I have seen them done...stamp block inking and direct to paper inking. All you need for them are an ink pad, a clear acrylic block and a water spritzer. I grabbed 4 different inks, as I wanted to make a set of 4. For the ink block stamping I grabbed a square acrylic block that is about 2.75"x2.75" and covered it with ink by tapping the ink pad on it till it was covered. I then spritzed it with water twice and pressed it directly on my trimmed piece of cardstock. I learned that for this technique, paper choice is very important. I had originally used my usual white cardstock, but because I was using water, it completely absorbed it and went all splotchy. I would recommend a paper meant for watercolouring. For this I used a mixed media paper that was perfect and gave me the results I was looking for.

I then picked 2 different flowers from the Botanical Garden stamp set and stamped each one on 2 of the different colours. Next I picked a perfect happy birthday from the Birthday Builder stamp set. This set has happy birthday in the most perfect fonts that you will ever need!

 

 

Next I took each ink pad and ran them around the edges of each panel, for the direct to paper inking. This gave them a subtle pop of colour on the edges and also helps them to stand out a bit from the white cardbase. To complete each one, I smooshed each ink pad on my craft mat and spritzed the ink with water. I then grabbed a paint brush, picked up some of each colour of ink and started flicking it on the panels. I didn't want to go overboard with this, so I kept it a bit light.

All that was left was to add some foam to the back of them to give them a bit of definition and pop them up on the card base. That's it! I wanted to keep them nice and simple, to let the inking techniques take centre stage. I know the perfect person that I'm going to gift them to!

I hope you've enjoyed my cards for today. I certainly enjoyed making them. It's always fun to try new techniques! This is definitely a technique that I'll be revisiting again! There are so many other colours to try and I think it would be fabulous in an ombré effect! Again I thank you for taking the time to stop by and don't forget to take some time out for yourself to get crafty!

Supplies Used:

• Altenew Botanical Garden stamp set
• Altenew Birthday Builder stamp set
• Altenew Aqualicious, Warm Sunshine, Coral Berry and lavender Fields mini ink pads
• Canson Mix Media 120lb paper
• clear acrylic block
• Lawn Fawn Black Licorice dye ink pad
• paint brush
• white fun foam
• misc white card base
• water spritzer