Before I start I just want to say that this will be the last Tuesday Technique post this summer. The weather is beautiful, we’re always outside, and I simply don’t have the time to blog like I want to right now! Hope you all understand – things will get back to normal in the fall! We have so little great weather here that I feel the need to take full advantage while it’s nice!

Moving along…

You should all know my love of Dylusions Ink sprays by now, I do use them once in a while! 😉 So, I decided to do a quick little tutorial on how to use and layer them to build backgrounds. All you need are your Ink Sprays:

…and some water!

Dylusions work best for the techniques I’ll be showing you as they were made to react and play with water for neat effects.

First, pick your colours and randomly, but heavily, mist your surface:

I always mist with water and roll paper towel over it after the initial step. This will blend the colours a little more and take off the excess water while subduing the vibrancy a bit. Remember, we’re going for a background here, it needs to be a little more subtle!

The next step is to lay a stencil over the misted surface and spray with water.

Since the Ink Sprays react, the stencil creates a ghost like image to appear. Don’t worry if it doesn’t show up immediately when you try this, it takes a second for the water and ink to react and as the surface dries, the ghosted image becomes more pronounced.

Finally, after drying what’s been done so far, I spatter mist on top to get coloured droplets. All I do is remove the top of the bottle and shake the tube of ink over the surface – instant drops instead of mist!

I almost always finish my bright backgrounds with black stamped images – they stand out better and they make the colours pop. For the lighter images, I rub the ink pad over the stamp instead of properly inking up the stamp. You get a second generation look without having to stamp off first.

Hope you enjoyed this last tag of the summer and I hope you stick around for my erratic postings over the next month or so!

As always, please link me up to your projects – I’d love to see what you create!

S.