Bokeh Card With a Twist

Hi there crafty peeps!  It's Amber here, and I am back today to share a card I created with a fun technique I have wanted to try out for a while now.  I have seen so many tutorials on creating a "Bokeh effect" on card backgrounds using watercolors and white pigment ink.  This is a common technique used in modern photography, that has been showing up in card making lately.  It looked like a lot of fun, so I thought why not give it a try?  Even better though, I wanted to give it a twist for St. Patrick's Day.

The tutorials I have seen online used stencils made from different sized circles, but I used a stencil from Gourmet Rubber Stamps called Shamrocks.  It has three different sized shamrocks on the stencil, so it was perfect for this technique.

I first created a green watercolored background with Tim Holtz watercolor paper and Distress inks in Mowed Lawn, Peeled Paint, Pine Needles, and Bundled Sage.  I then dried the background with my heat gun.  After it was dry, I took the stencil and randomly stenciled different sizes of the shamrocks all over the paper in different intensities with Memento Luxe Wedding Dress Pigment Ink.  This makes the shamrocks look like they are on all different visual planes of view.  When this was dry, I matted it onto white cardstock.  I then wrapped a small band of vellum around the panel with the word happy stamped and embossed onto it.  I cut the "St Patrick's Day" sentiment and arrow in gold glitter paper from my Silhouette Cameo, and attached that under the vellum.  I created a bow and wrap for the card with Gold Metallic String from the Really Reasonable Ribbon Store. I then finished the card with a few sequins from Pretty Pink Posh.

I hope you enjoy this artistic take on a modern photography technique.  Have a wonderful day filled with a little bit of your own Irish luck!