Perched Bird on a Painterly Alcohol Ink Background
by Anne Thompson

I used a painterly alcohol ink technique to create a background for the PERCHED BIRD 94244 on today's card.

how I created the background

• I started with a piece of Alcohol Ink Cardstock (Tim Holtz for Ranger).
• I added some drops of Alcohol Blending Solution (Tim Holtz for Ranger) on the top third or so of the paper.
• Then I added drops of alcohol ink on top of the blending solution (Tim Holtz for Ranger).  I started with Aquamarine.
• I used a paintbrush to move the ink around into horizontal lines of color.  (I have one dedicated for use with alcohol inks only.)  I had to work really quickly and still had some blotchy spots which I kind of liked.  Alcohol inks dry really fast!  

• Continuing to work down the paper, I added more blending solution and Stream ink, overlapping the Aquamarine. 
• For the next section, I added more blending solution and Pesto ink, blending it into the blue layer.
• For the bottom I used Sepia ink blended into the green.
• I added a few more drops of ink where I thought more color was needed and blended it in with the paintbrush.

• Alcohol inks dry very quickly, in just seconds.  And this technique is not as messy as some…only one blue blotch on my thumb!
• I chose a light blue notecard and used Scor-tape to adhere the trimmed 4 X 5.25 panel to it.

For the Perched Bird, I chose another notecard in the same color to die cut it.  I chose not to use the dotted rayed background because I wanted more of the inky colors to show.  I used some white glue to attach it to the alcohol ink background.

All in all, this was a pretty quick card to put together.  Another day when I have a bit more time and more alcohol ink cardstock I plan to make a pile of these backgrounds in a variety of colors to have on hand.

Happy Crafting!

94244