Tutorial Time

I have been playing with this new technique I saw online. Honestly I looked at a picture and found my own way of doing it. I am good at that. I like to experiment.

The supplies you need for this project are brushes, ink and paper. Optional painters tape and shapes for masking areas off.  It is a super simple technique and a lot of fun to experiment with.

  So I found a picture online of a pretty card made with brushes and ink. The brushes where ink dusters and I looked them up and tried to find them at the local craft stores and no luck. Online they were more than I was willing to pay so I thought I would just get some regular brushes (on the left). I used them on a few cards and they worked pretty good but I wanted a fluffier brushes still. So I happened upon the make up brushes (on the right) at Target for $1 each. I was happy to find them so cheap and love the way they work even more than the regular brushes.

I used some scrap paper and ripped the edges in different patterns. I used them as masks for the different colors and to produce different shades. Tip~ start the brush on the scrap paper so the strokes are more even.

You can do this technique using the masking scraps above and do different colors, like the top three in the above examples. Or you can use shapes to mask areas off, like the balloon one above. Or you can use them to color that shape. This is what I did with this one. I used Christmas tree cut outs this this tutorial.

 I brushed a small amount of red first just for fun.

I used Tim Holtz Distress ink on this example however I used Stampin up and some other generic ink for the others. So any ink will do.

  This is the first time I used the template to add ink to the shape only. I just add some ink to the brush and stroke the ink on a few times, then more ink, over and few time. I re-ink the brush several times.

Then I used the actual cut outs and some painters tape to cover them up to add the red.

 I however taped the tree on the left on the wrong side so my tree has a white glow around it a bit more than I would have like but its okay.

 I used the paper mask that I made and inked red in different shades all over the card.

 I just brushed over the tree masks.

 I moved the paper around so the pattern would vary.

Here is the red all done.

 Here is the front all inked. This is a very mess technique so make sure you put something under the paper. I used a piece of foam. You can see where my card was on the green foam below. 

Here is the finished card. I added brads to the tree for the ornaments and the star on top. The rest is Inspired Stamps Christmas stamps. I used the holly in the corners from the Poinsettia set. The sentiments stamps are from Vintage Christmas.
Another idea for this technique is just to make your own background paper.

This one I just randomly dabbed and brushed red and green ink on. Then I cut my paper to card front size. I stamped on top of it and colored my image.

 The background came out nice on this card. I added another sentiment from the Poinsettia Set

I added a few red brads and some ribbon to decorate a bit more.