Hello Friends!

I am working my way through my classes and in the second layering class, I had an idea that I haven’t done in a long while. Breaking it down simply is I blend the inks on the stamp. I thought how fun it would be to layer the blending. The secret is that you need to find colors that are far enough apart on a color wheel, but usually on the same side. What I mean by that is you really need to try and keep warm colors together and cooler colors together.

I used red and yellow in this example to create a layer of orange that would blend the layers of inks. Notice there is space between red and yellow on this color wheel. (This s a super basic color wheel so imagine if we had more colors between yellow and red.)

Different kinds of yellows will respond with different reds in fun way. Take a moment to look at all the fun you can have with layering colors, using a more complete color wheel.

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Now you can image, with all those colors of ink that Altenew offers. I love that the inks are so subtle in change, yet so varied. Think of these inks as paints you can blend!

Moving on, You will note my card is on a green base with some green baubles on it. The reason I chose to use a yellow green is, that it is opposite red, (the primary color of my card image) on the color wheel. I use this yellow green because yellow is a primary blending color on this card. The yellow in the green of the base card is supported because I used yellow with red to make that yellow-orange blend.

The idea of layering isn’t just putting down ink colors on top of each other, but there is an art to it. Choosing a color scheme that makes sense will make our layered ink cards so much more beautiful. For some artist this is absolutely a natural ability for others it’s not that easy. I have found that understanding why I chose a color can help others make the choice easier.

How I blended the inks is simple:

1. Put the lighter colored ink (Yellow) on the center of stamp out almost to the edge.
2. Add the darker ink (Red) around the edges and moving inward a bit.
3. Using a wet baby wipe or wet paper towel, dab the hard edges made by ink pads
4. Stamp image (usually best if you use a stamping platform)
5. If you need to repeat, clean stamp between stamping image

The best part of using the Altenew stamps is the number of layers. I repeated the process on the next layer with inks that were slightly darker (creates great shadows).

The third layer, I used a darker red to be sure there was enough definition and to give the flower a defined overall color.

It is amazing the things that taking classes can bring back. I love the way this card came out. Let me know what you think below.

Blessings!

Erika