I can’t tell you how much fun I’m having creating cards for AECP. The Easy Ink Blending Techniques class was, again, one of my favorites. They gave so many ideas I had a hard time settling on just one, so I didn’t.

It’s amazing where we find our inspiration. Here’s the story about inspiration for this card. I’ve been studying how to take great photos of my cards. I want to show them off in the best light. I used to zoom way in and have the card completely fill the frame. I thought this would allow the viewer to see the details of my card. However, I’ve learned from studying photos done professionally that it’s important to frame the card. So I was looking at what things people were using to frame the card and sometimes it’s a fountain pen! Now, my husband and I have LOTS of fountain pens. One of my favorite pens my husband got me for our anniversary was a limited edition Pilot Namiki Vanishing Point.

I love the the ombré color going from turquoise to violet. I just had to use those colors on a card and what better way than to do some ink blending. I ink blended Altenew’s Midnight Violet into Ranger’s Distress Ink Tumbled Glass. The Midnight Violet was more red-ish than the pen so blending the blue into the purple made the purple more blue-ish. I did the ink blending just at the top of a white card front and then used a die cut to cut a window in another piece of white cardstock. This would allow the color to peek through. I trimmed the top piece down a quarter inch so the blending would also show around the sides to give a kind of frame. I then white heat embossed flowers from the Pen Sketched Flowers stamp and die set. I ink blended the flowers with the same colors but in reverse. I put the blue on top and blended down to the violet. I glued this to the die cut panel and added Stickles in various shades of blue and purple to give a fantasy feeling to the card. I used foam tape to pop the die cut panel above the ink blended card front. I LOVE the colors of this card and am very happy the way it turned out.