Inked Background & Silhouette Birthday Card

Dena Rekow from the Creativity Cave is my favourite stamper to watch and learn from, she is such fun!  I've watched many of her YouTube videos and I've recently joined her online monthly Facebook classes.

I love inked backgrounds and I've always got great results with Inkylicious ink duster brushes used with Tim Holtz Distress Inks.  The Inkylicious ink duster brushes do not work well with the SU! inks however, sponges seem to be the best option to apply the SU! inks but I've found my results mainly unsuccesful.  Dena uses oval make up brushes with SU! classic inks to create inked backgrounds and her results look stunning.  I found some oval brushes on the UK Amazon website and ordered a few to try them out for myself.  Oh my word, the brushes work amazingly well with the SU! inks, the results are so much better than using sponges to apply the inks!

I used the brushes to apply SU! Daffodil Delight, Calypso Coral and Poppy Parade inks to a panel of Whisper White CS.  Once you've picked up ink from the pad it's important to brush onto scrap paper to get rid of any excess ink before brushing directly to your CS panel.  Once I'd brushed my background I stamped the sentiment and adhered the very pretty floral silhouette die cut shape from the SU! 'Springtime Impressions' die set.  I trimmed the panel to fit the front of my A6 sized card base, glued the panel in place and added some black rhinestones.
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One of Dena's 'go to' embellishment tricks is to splatter clear Wink of Stella over a piece.  It adds such a lovely touch of shimmer!

 

Here's the inside of the card and the envelope.

 

Supplies:
Stamps: SU! 'Beautiful Friendship' & 'Perennial Birthday' sets
CS: SU! Basic Black & Whisper White
Ink: SU! Daffodil Delight, Calypso Coral & Poppy Parade, VersaFine Onyx Black
Tools: SU! 'Springtime Impressions' die set, oval make up brushes
Embellishments & accessories: black rhinestones, clear Wink of Stella pen
Ruth