Alcohol Ink Backgrounds with colored images

I’ve seen lots of cards being posted of everyone creating these fabulous backgrounds with alcohol inks. I mean seriously, they are gorgeous! But what I don’t see a lot of is using those gorgeous backgrounds for cards with colored images. I can sort of see why. The backgrounds are so intense and amazing you don’t really want to lose your focal point. What I have today is a video showing some different backgrounds I created with alcohol inks and how I was able to use them on cards with colored images and have them not get lost in the background.

Now you’ve already seen one card. If not, be sure to check out my previous post from today. I created a stunning background with alcohol inks and paired it with an eskimo image from Kraftin Kimmie Stamps. I was purposely going for a Northern Lights look in the sky and I think I accomplished that.

My second card for today is an ocean scene. I created some random backgrounds using lots of different blue alcohol inks. I saw random because you’ll never get the same thing twice no matter how hard you try. My original thought was to make the alcohol ink background look like the ocean and cut waves from it. Problem was when I started putting things together, my images were totally lost in the backgrounds even when I trimmed them down. Here is how I made it work.

My video walks you through all of my steps in creating these backgrounds and the copic coloring of the images. My trick for making this card come together was to break it down. I added a strip of white cardstock to the middle of the background piece. There is much going on in the background sometimes with the vibrant colors and movements that you have to tone it down a notch. That way you still see the adorable images you took the time to color up AND have this fun amazing background to go with them.