Inky Topper Backgrounds - a how I did it post

Evening Everyone,

I hope this finds you well and enjoying the weekend.

I've been trying out a new, for me, inking technique for making backgrounds for toppers and I thought I'd show you how it's done ... just in case you've never seen it before and might like to give it a try. This one is easy :)

First, here is the card I made with the finished topper, and sentiment.

Step 1: here's the materials required ... a scrap of white card ... mine measured 3.75" x 2.5" (10x6.5cm) ... and some Memento Dew Drop ink pads ... here I've chosen the colours Love Letter, Pear Tart and Danube Blue. Dew Drop pads are the perfect shape but I'd say that almost any pad that is shaped to have a pointed end would be just as good.

Step 2: drag the pads down the card, more or less in a straight line, to create a striped effect ... it doesn't have to be perfect, in fact, the less perfect it is the better.

Step 3: the stamping. Choose your stamp ... I chose Inkadinkado's Camera for this, my first, attempt ... and decide which way the stripes are going to go ... here I've stamped portrait, but it could just as easily been landscape.

Step 4: trim the stamping down before matting ... I used black card, another scrap, for the mat ... and construct the card.

The base is a 5"square black card from Craft UK, the patterned paper is from Pebbles Sunny Side 6x6 pad and the green and red card candy is from stash.

Step 5: going mad with all my dinky ink pads and scraps of card. I tried out a variety of scraps ... matte, shiny, smooth and even gold 'pearlescent'. The latter didn't work well, 24 hours later the ink still hadn't dried! I also discovered that newer, wetter pads give the best results.

You can really had fun mixing up the colours. I now have some very useful backgrounds for card toppers ... all except the gold one which had to be binned.

Some snippets, quite a few in fact, were used up in the making of this post so I'm off over to Di's playground ... Pixies Snippets Playground - Week 97 ... to submit my card and see what the other Snippeteers have been doing with snippets too.

I hope some of you found this way of using ink pads of interest and if you decide to try out it out for yourself, do let me know - I'd love to see what you do with it :)

In the meantime, take care and happy crafting,