Soft Spring & Color Blending

Have you tried to blend different colors together and ended up with a gray mess? Well it happens! To avoid this I try to stay with some colors that are either in the same (kind of) family. For example, red tones or blue/greens as I did on these two cards.

To make these two cards I first cut a circle out of some Eclipse masking paper and placed it on the white cardstock.

On the shades of reds I used Distress inks (not the Oxides, although they blend beautifully) starting with the lightest shade (Tattered Rose), then the medium (Abandoned Coral) and finally the darkest (Picked Raspberry).

On what I call the "blue/green" blends I used Twisted Citron for the lightest, Salty Ocean and Chipped Sapphire, again working from lightest to darkest.

After removing the masks I stamped the images from Stampin' Up's Soft Spring, which is a new Hostess set that is available this coming June (Yay!). I stamped the images in Versafine ink as I wanted it to be very black and Momento just doesn't get this black.

After cutting the rectangles out with a stitched rectangle die I mounted them onto the front of the cards with a piece of craft foam and finally added some Nuvo Crystal Gems.

What I love about this type of card is that you can very easily make a single layer card with a design like this. I didn't because I already had a couple pieces of white cardstock I wanted to use and I didn't want to fuss with finding the exact center to put the mask on. Hope you like them!