Alcohol Inks and Mandalas

I wanted to pop in today to share a few cards I created recently. I am sincerely trying to post more frequently despite the fact that I am having supreme difficulty getting decent photos of my projects.

I've been trying different things for picture taking. Trying my phone, which ends up slightly blurry. Trying my camera, which ends up blurry or dark or in some other way unappealing. Trying in my living room by the big picture window, which ends up with a blue cast. On my dining room table, which ends up blurry and a bit dark. I even tried my bright bedroom as seen in the first photo here and that looks odd to me. I've tried editing these and this is as good as I can get it. I really think my camera is too old, but I haven't pulled the trigger to buy a new one. I have to do something though, because it's getting pretty frustrating. So, feel free to enlarge if you like, but no promises on how decent it looks. Eventually I'll get it worked out.

Enough of that vent, here's what I've been working on.

The first card I am sharing is to give you an idea of what I used for the second card. I used alcohol inks on Yupo paper to get the look you see in this heart. I also added some gold mixative. I tried to capture how pretty and intense the color is.

The Lawn Fawn hugs sentiment is cut from some gold cardstock I bought at Hobby Lobby over the holidays. It's got some dimension from a couple of cuts from black cardstock and layered. 

I had some of the alcohol inked paper left over and recently received the My Favorite Things new Magical Mandala die which I thought would look neat die cut from the alcohol inked background. I tried it on a background I didn't like as much and it failed to cut cleanly despite running the die through a couple of times. I thought the Yupo paper couldn't be cut cleanly until I saw a blogger who shared a card with this same die cut from Yupo paper. I asked her if she did anything special. Nope, just ran it through a few times. So I tried again, this time running it through like 5-6 times. It cut better, but I still struggled to get some of the pieces out.  (My Cuttlebug is the original one from like 2005 or so, it probably is showing its age, too). 

Here's what I came up with. 

 Despite all the struggles getting a clean cut, I am thrilled with the end result!

The happy birthday is heat embossed in gold using the sentiment from Paper Smooches recently released In Stitches stamp set. The rounded corner stitched mat is from MFT Blueprints 31.

This final card is not alcohol inked at all. I just thought I'd share it because I was using the Magical Mandala die. It cut regular cardstock beautifully. I cased a card made by Torico  as shown in this blog post . She colored vellum with Copic markers to get the stained glass effect. I remember learning that technique way back in my early years of paper crafting. I love how these techniques come around again and are so fresh and fun. 

I didn't have a frame for the stained glass window effect that Torico used, so I adhered the vellum to the cardstock mandala using Stick It. I then fussy cut around the edge  of the mandala to cut away the excess vellum. I colored the back side of the vellum using Copic markers.  I used what turned out to be the last of the adhesive in my Xyron 5 inch machine to cover the back of the vellum so I could attach it to the mat. I heat embossed the sentiment in silver. I added the white dots with my white Uniball gel. pen. I'm so happy with the final result. 

Thanks so much for stopping by. 

I hope you have a happy day!

Hugs,