Building rainbow backgrounds on cards

Altenew, in addition to its stamps, has a line of wonderful inks with matching watercolors and alcohol markers. Altenew sets up its inks into blending groups. By organizing the inks into blending groups this takes care of the guesswork of which inks would work well with other inks. Altenew alcohol artist markers work the same way. The artist markers are available in sets and all the colors within a set work together. In the Altenew academy class Creative Coloring the instructor uses Altenew alcohol artist markers to make some amazing backgrounds and images. I do not own the Altenew artist markers. For this card I’m using my Copic markers but following the techniques illustrated in the Altenew academy class on alcohol markers. For information on my entry into Copics, read a past blog post here. The biggest take away from the class was to practice, practice, practice blending. The first piece the instructor made was a rainbow blended background. I was really intrigued to try this out myself and it gave me an opportunity to use some of the Copic markers that I never use. Please keep reading to see how I made a rainbow background and turned it into a card. Affiliate links are used in this post. If you decide to purchase through these links I may receive a small commission at no cost to you. Thank you for your support.

To begin, I chose a dark, medium and light shade of Copic markers for six of the rainbow color families: red (R20, R22, R24, R29), orange (YR00, YR04, YR07), yellow (Y000, Y13, Y19), green (G000, YG11, G09, G28), blue (B00, B02, B06, B34, B39) and purple (BV000, BV02, V09). On a piece of Neenah solar white 80 pound cardstock I blended a dark red and medium red and a light red together. I then continued around the panel going from red to orange to yellow to green to blue and then purple. Starting with the darkest on the edge of the panel and then medium then light. I continued blending between the color families too until I got the panel as cohesive as I could. I didn’t like all the harsh marker lines and there were some spots that didn’t blend great so I added some perfect pearls. On the panel I stamped all over with Perfect Medium which is a sticky ink. I then dabbed some Perfect Gold with a dry brush and continued to rub the powder all over the panel. I added some Perfect Pearl Powder too and burnished both powders into the panel with my finger until the whole panel had a nice sheen to it. The Perfect Pearls smoothed over all the blending and helped make the colors seem like they worked together.

The rainbow background is so bold and bright that it needed a neutral to offset the colors. Using the Altenew cover dies: Dodec and Plaid B, I cut out a piece of Neenah solar white 80 lb cardstock from each cover die. I love these cover dies because of their intricate patterns and their size. I then added some Gina K glue to the back of the die cut pieces and attached them to the rainbow panels. I trimmed down the rainbow panels so they fit perfectly behind the white die cuts.

For the sentiment, I stamped hello from Altenew Blooming Bouquet Stamp set in Gina K black amalgam ink and heat set it with Hero Arts clear embossing powder. I then used the coordinating dies to cut out hello. I then cut out a 1” strip of vellum and made a belly band for the panel. I attached the hello diecut and then added a strip of black cardstock where I had white heat embossed a sentiment fromAltenew Needlework Motif stamp set. The entire front panel was adhered to a top folding A2 white card.

This card is now ready to make someone’s day. Thank you for joining me today. Let me know in the comments below which card you liked: Dodec or Plaid. If you’re feeling inspired to try making this card, I’ve included the supplies I used. These are affiliate links and if you choose to shop through them, I get a small commission at no cost to you. Thank you for the support. Have a wonderful and crafty day.