Tutorial - Simple Background Colouring

Hello everyone! I'm here to share a tutorial on colouring a simple background I made for Kraftin' Kimmie Stamps! White always looks very elegant on cards, but for a different look, you can add colour to the background of your image - something I do quite often and learnt from my super talented friend Zoe. I made an ATC last week using that technique with Treena Twinkles and thought some people might be interested in how I coloured the background, so I've made another one to share.

Materials:

Distress Inks (Tumbled Glass, Faded Jeans, Chipped Sapphire)

Mini Ink Blending Tool

Copics

and your favourite Kraftin' Kimmie Stamp ;)

Step 1

Stamp your image - Treena Twinkles here - in Memento Tuxedo Black Ink and colour the skin. I always colour the skin first to make sure I won't put dark colours from around onto the skin.

Step 2

Pick a Copic in the shade you want, making sure you have Distress Inks in the same shades. Since I'm going to use mostly blue Distress Inks, I chose my B02 Copic. To colour the background, make circular movements and start from the lines of your image and go towards the edge of your paper, then come back towards the black lines, then colour going towards the outside, and repeat until you have all the background covered. I almost do not lift my Copic from the paper when I do that, to avoid having visible sections.

Step 3

Colour your character completely to save the Distress Ink part for the end (to avoid putting Distress Ink on the image with your hand by accident, adding Distress Ink is to be done at the end;)). 

Step 4

Now to Distress Inks :) We're going to use three shades of Distress Inks: Tumbled Glass, Faded Jeans and Chipped Sapphire. Start with the lightest shade - Tumbled Glass. To apply the ink, I always put a plastic sheet under my image (I don't have a craft mat) and I use the small round Blending Tool. Apply the ink doing circular movements, starting on the plastic sheet, then overlapping your paper and moving closer to the image little by little. Once close to the image, lift your Blending Tool and start again from the edge of your paper to work towards the image until you have covered all the surface.

Step 5

Take your second shade of Distress Ink - Faded Jeans for me - a shade a bit darker than the first, and apply always starting from the edge of your paper and working towards the image but do not go as close to the image as you did with your first shade of Distress Ink.

Step 6

Take your third Distress Ink, your darkest one - Chipped Sapphire for me and apply on the edges of your paper really staying on the borders of your paper - you don't want to cover all the Faded Jeans from the previous step, you want to add contrast to the background. 

Step 7

Make your card! I stamped a sentiment from the Treena Twinkles set and added a bit of gold on the edges of my image and that was it.

Here are two other examples of cards I made in the past, using the same background technique:

Using Little Orphan Annie rubber stamp and Love Story Sentiments clear stamp set

Using Treena Twinkles - yes, I LOVE her!!

Thank you very much for your visit, have a great day! Hugs,

Delphine xx