Bokeh Butterfly Card

With the Bokeh technique being all the rage right now, I couldn’t wait to try it myself. Instead of using the standard watercolor or sponged ink techniques I have seen used to create the background, I used Close to my Heart’s mini pigment ink pads. It was really fun. I started out by smudging some Crystal Blue Pigment Ink directly onto a piece of cardstock. Then I added a little Glacier, Juniper, and Lagoon ink. I used my finger to blend the colors together. It was really fun! It created a creamy, smooth background. I let it sit for a little bit and then hit it quickly with my Craft Heater.

Then I punched a bunch of different sized holes in a piece of vellum with some circle punches to use as a stencil. I laid the vellum stencil on top of the blue background and used White Pigment Ink with a Sponge Dauber to create the different sized circles which created the fun Bokeh pattern. (Make sure to overlap some of the circles, use various sized circles, and make some of the circles a little darker than others.)

Because the pigment ink is not easy to stamp on and when you stamp your sentiment first and then cover the stamped image with pigment ink, it looks faded, I decided to cut my sentiment from a piece of Cocoa cardstock. I used the Carolyna Pro Black font and created the “hello” sentiment in Design Space and then cut it with my Explore machine. I adhered it to the bottom with Bonding Memories Glue.

Then I stamped the adorable butterfly from the Hostess stamp set called Paper Bird onto a piece of vellum with Brown StazOn ink. I cut it out, bent up the wings, and adhered it to the cardstock by adding adhesive just to the body of the butterfly. I poked some holes in the cardstock with my Piercing Tool to create the trail. To finish it off, I adhered the entire piece to a Cocoa cardstock base.