Cindy Brown: Polychromatic

 This card focused on the techniques of color, using several mediums. I had so much fun with this course and I learned new things about card-making. This card taught me the idea of layering techniques with the same colors to communicate celebration.

The first layer brings color to the Canson XL 100 pound paper with Altenew dye inks mixed with water and painted in dabs. From top to bottom the colors are: Cotton Candy, Mango Smoothy, Ocean Waves and Lavender Fields. For a softer background, I could have stopped here. 

But,  I added 2 more layers of color to achieve this more vivid color. The paper is taped with Washi tape so that I could minimize paper warping. I let this dry naturally. 

Then, I used the same Altenew dye inks as above to randomly stamp streamers from Altenew Birthday Bash.

Next, I used alcohol markers to color in the streamers. From top to bottom I used Altenew artist markers in Cotton Candy (with Copic RV10 as the lighter shade), Buttercream and Mango Smoothie, Ocean Wave and Dusk, Soft Lilac and Lavender Field.  I used the darker colors to bring dimension to each streamer.

Detail of the finished streamers. Also note the tiny splatters which were splattered on just before stamping the streamers in the same color as the underlying ink (except for a few stray splatters).

I stamped the sentiment from Birthday Bash with Versamark embossing ink and used Ranger Super Fine Black embossing powder on Altenew Vellum Paper. Note all of the strays pieces on the vellum (even though I did use an antistatic powder before stamping). This would have melted and been very obvious if I hadn't removed it  before applying heat. 

Above, see that I carefully removed the stray pieces with a superfine detail silicone paint brush (vs. fiber paint brush). I find that for such a detailed piece, the silicone picks up the stray pieces of powder and avoids accidentally moving powder I don't want moved. It isn't perfect here, but each time I attempt to remove stray powder, I risk removing parts I don't want removed, so I selectively targeted what I could remove without causing damage that would make me have to start all over again with the powder.

Next, I applied heat after making sure that my embossing tool was as hot as possible and then I worked very quickly to avoid warping the vellum or overheating the embossing powder. I then used markers on the back of the vellum to correspond with the color on the card that the sentiment was placed over. Here I have used the alcohol markers in Cotton Candy and Mango Smoothie. Then I fussy cut around the sentiment and used glue to adhere it to the card. Because the vellum is transparent, I have concealed the glue under opacity of the melted embossing powder. I finished by adding sparkling 3mm stars from HAI in the corresponding colors of each level. The sparkle from the stars added another level of color and celebration to the card.

I was able to mount the card onto a 110 pound Neenah cardstock base by using dry adhesive tape. Because I had taped down my paper, the water had caused minimal warpage, and there was no problem with this method of adhering my card. Had I not taped it down, or even if taping it down had still resulted in warping, then I may have needed to first mount the card onto a foam platform, for stability, before mounting it to the card.