Spray Inks

As I was looking around my craft room the other day I spotted this container on a bottom shelf full of spray inks. There are all different kinds, some with shimmer and lots without. I haven't touched them in such a long time that I thought I might just get rid of them. But then I decided to pull them out and try them again...and turns out I love them still. In fact I made over a dozen different designs/color combinations to be used on cards. Today I'm sharing the first technique I tried and later this week I'll share some others.

For this first design I had an idea of a circular design. I have this stencil from college of all different sizes of circles so I placed that over a piece of white cardstock (neenah solar white is my favorite). Then I protected the rest of the area with some white printer paper to create kind of a mask. Next I picked out some stencils with designs to lay over the circle opening. Then it was just about choosing inks and spritzing away. You can see that it didn't create a perfect stencil design, but that is okay. I loved the different combinations I was able to create.

After each one I would set the cardstock aside to dry and then wash off the stencil and begin again. To help speed things up I kept a shallow dish of soapy water to quickly dip the stencils in and then I removed the water with papertowels. I let them dry for a day and then gathered them all up and put them in a stack on my crafting table. Having stacks of cardstock with stamping, spritzing or any design technique on my crafting table helps when I just have a few moments to quickly make some cards....or on days I'm not feeling super creative (yes, I have those days!).

I hope you've been inspired to break out your stencils and spray inks and come up with some lovely backgrounds.

- Jessica