This week I have been playing with my Altenew Crisp Dye inks, I love them for stamping but I haven’t done too much ink blending with them so I wanted to test how they did. Spoiler – They are FAST becoming my absolute favourite and go to ink!

I also wanted to try ink blending straight onto the 110lb Neenah because I’ve not tried that since getting it from The Little Paper Tree, so this was a good all round test of these supplies!! I’ve been loving having this card stock as my standard card bases; I can leave a thin white border around all of my card panels because the card base is the exact same tone of white and it is super thick & sturdy so it makes an excellent, quality feeling card.

I used some masking tape to stick the new Altenew Mega Bloom stencil to my card base from behind, so that the tape wouldn’t get in the way of my blending and masked off what would be the back side of my card.

I grabbed one of my ink blending brushes, (just generic make up ones from Amazon) and got to work blending. It really doesn’t take much effort to get a gorgeous colour payoff from these inks, but I didn’t want a smooth, even blend here; I was after some variation in colour strength across my image.

Once I was happy with the blend I removed the stencil and let the ink settle whilst I got the bits I needed to finish my card; these inks are dye based so they are dry to the touch pretty much instantly, but the colour will even out & settle.

I added a stripe of black Gouache across the the lower part of the flower design; this card stock isn’t meant for watercolour so it won’t take much water at all, but Gouache doesn’t need much water and is so pigmented that just one layer of paint gave me this completely opaque stripe. I also added some paint splatters by just tapping my paintbrush gently against my finger whilst holding it above my card.

I added a simple sentiment using super fine Opaque White WOW! embossing powder, which some may say disqualifies it from being a true one layer card but I definitely think it still counts.

I used a .5 black fineliner and t-square ruler to add a black border, opting to stop where the border meets that large flower.