DieNamites Twilight Bokeh Card

Hello! Today I tried something out of my comfort zone. I was checking out the DieNamites November DT Tips & Techniques Blog Hop (Click HERE to see it… there are some nifty tips and fabulous new dies out!), and I decided to look at their November Inspiration Challenge (which you can find HERE) while I was there. This was the inspiration photo:

I’m not particularly fond of the Bokeh look on cards. (FYI, Bokeh is from the Japanese word for ‘blur’ or ‘haze’ and refers to the out-of-focus points of light in a photograph.) Perhaps because I haven’t tried it enough to like it. However I really liked the twilight shimmer in this photo and wanted to see if I could come up with a similar look. Here’s what I came up with:

I started by spritzing over the butterfly as a stencil so that I would have a white area to offset the die cut after coloring the back to get the bright edge.

Then I kept a butterfly on the white area as a mask as I added layers of color. For the Bokeh dots, I used a white Sharpie oil based paint marker. It takes a few layers to get the opaque white, so you can easily vary the tone of each dot.

Tip: I don’t have a sticker maker for my intricate dies like Erin suggested in the hop (HERE), so I use Scrapbook Adhesives by 3L’s E-Z dots runner. The negative is that they leave some little shiny spots that extend over the edges as you can see above. These can easily be picked up with a rubber square sold at art supply stores for removing rubber cement. Below you can see they are gone from the die and all in a little ball on the end of my rubber square.

Tip 2: You can tell from the picture of the die I used that, like Martha Lucia suggested (HERE), you can cut apart your dies to mix them up a bit.  I also suggest layering your die cuts to add dimension and depth. I cut the butterfly 3 times and affixed the bottom layer to the card and affixed just the middle of the top two, bending the wings over a pencil to raise them.

Materials used:

• DieNamites Butterfly Applique which you can find HERE

• Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist: Coral Reef & S.W.A.K.
• Tombow Dual Brush Pens: 055, 933, 965
• Ranger Tim Holtz Distress Inks: Barn Door, Faded Jeans, and Spiced Marmalade
• Sharpie Oil Based Paint Marker – White
• Scrapbook Adhesives by 3L E-Z Dots
• Misc. Cardstock – White, yellow, blue

I’m playing along in the following hops and challenges:

• DieNamites November DT Tip and Technique Blog Hop:  http://www.die-namitesblog.com/2015/11/november-dt-tip-and-technique-blog-hop.html
• DieNamites November Inspiration Challenge: http://www.die-namitesblog.com/2015/11/november-inspiration-challenge.html
• edited to add a late addition: STAMPlorations’ ARTplorations Stencil Blog Hop, Running Dec. 9-13, 2015.  http://stamplorations.blogspot.com/2015/12/artplorations-stencil-blog-hop-day-2.html

As always, I appreciate hearing your thoughts and comments. Have a great day!

-D.Ann

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