So excited today – Colour INKspiration is back for 2019!  The Design Team is refreshed and ready to share fabulous projects with you.  We take our inspiration from the colour palettes of beautiful photography.

The year is starting with Colour INKspiration #49 and these gorgeous colours.  You might be starting here or you may have come via our lovely guest designer Virginia Hampson.

I’ve been wanting to try some colour blending.  At our last team meeting my upline shared a tip on using glycerine with reinkers to create smoother blending.  I’m pretty sure this isn’t a new technique – but you know me… never the first to be trying things (but I get there in the end!).

I started with a piece of Whisper White cardstock and drops of the four colours on one of my large acrylic blocks.  I added a blob of glycerine in the corner of the block, ready for blending with my inks.  The process of blending is the same as if you just used ink, but after you’ve added ink to the dauber, pick up some glycerine as well and then apply the ink as you usually would.  I used circular motions and built up the colour gradually.  The glycerine acts as a lubricant and helps to distribute the ink more evenly.

Once I had my piece of cardstock blended with the four lovely colours, it was time to make it into something!  My original plan was a couple of cards, but I had leftovers, so I made a tag too!

The card on the left is simply a strip of the coloured cardstock (5-3/8″ x 1-1/8″) adhered to a thick Whisper White cardstock base, with white baker’s twine tied around.

The sentiment is from the Well Said bundle in Basic Black.

For the second card, I cut 4 x Stitched Shapes circles and arranged them across a thick Whisper White cardstock base.

The layout of this card was a happy accident.  I was planning something much more geometrical – but in the end the ‘random’ placement seemed to work best with the bright & fun colours.

I used the same bundle (Well Said) to add the black happy birthday sentiment – this time in the reverse pattern of the first card.  To get the die cut words to adhere easily, be sure to attach Multi-Purpose Adhesive sheet (MPAS) to the cardstock before you run it through the Big Shot.  It makes it so much easier and cleaner to add the words!

I had some pretty blended cardstock left over, so I added MPAS to the back and cut happy birthday from the Well Written dies.  I attached this to a piece of Whisper White cardstock finished with the tag topper die from the Beautiful Layers thinlits dies.

There’s so many possibilites now my blending skills are at next level (thanks to the glycerine!).

We’d love your project to be among the great entries we receive each challenge.  To join the challenge, simply create something using the 4 challenge colours for this fortnight and upload your card to our Colour INKspiration Facebook group.  Click here to visit.

Continue the hop by visiting Julia Quinn‘s bright, cheery & yummy project…

Thanks for joining us!  You can look forward to Colour INKspiration challenges twice a month for the rest of the year!  Make sure to subscribe to my blog to see my projects for each challenge, or join the Facebook group for all the challenge information.

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