Something New For Christmas??

I am in the "Something New For Christmas" LTC tracker.  I had an idea that I would carve a simple nativity silhouette and then my "something new" would be a fancy background.  The tracker had a link to a blog with  more than 50 background techniques; should be easy to find something I could do, right?

My favorite idea was covering your paper with torn masking tape, inking the tape, and then stamping the image on the taped card.  One problem I had was that the ink on the tape would not dry.  I was stamping the ink pad directly onto the card.  After a while I started putting the ink on the card with a makeup sponge.  This helped the ink to dry but the color was much lighter than I wanted.  Also, the stamp looked bad because of the uneven card surface.

Then I tried several different ink & salt techniques.  I tried ink & salt on card stock and ink & salt on photo paper.  I bought several kinds of inks and even made my own alcohol inks (I now have blue hands).  I like the photo paper look but I was afraid that that was the background that everyone was going to use.  I had discussed my tape issues on Facebook and others said what techniques they were using for the swap.


I went back to the background blog and found another to try.  You simply put rubber bands on a jar, roll it through your embossing ink pad, roll it on the paper, add embossing powder, and heat set.  Then you ink up the card with ink pads, spray inks, etc.  I really liked this one too but not for the stamp I had carved.  I may have liked it better if I would have used a colored embossing powder instead of clear.



Again I went to the internet searching for ATC's and ATC backgrounds.  I watched a few videos on YouTube and decided to try bubble paper.  I didn't think it would work for this project but wanted to give it a try.  I played around with it and this is the background technique that I have finally settled on!  I used store bought bubbles, food coloring, and photo paper.

I also tried pigment inks and dye inks on this card.  Sometimes the pigment ink didn't want to stick to the card.  And sometimes that effect looked nice but sometimes it didn't.  I didn't really like the dye ink look because it was to light.  So the cards I sent off are a mix of inks.  I can't wait to see what everyone else has done for this swap :)