Make a dreamy oxide ink watercolor background to set off your stamps with a vintage vibe.

Today Melinda is sharing a new passion for her – creating a beautiful oxide ink watercolor background that perfectly sets off any stamp that can offer a vintage feel. This beautifully detailed image from our Sketch Rose set is the perfect thing to show this off. Let’s dive in and see how Melinda made this!

Melinda got started by cutting a piece of watercolor paper to card panel size. She then smeared just a touch of her picks of oxide ink colors onto a glass mat and sprayed it amply with a fine mist of water. You do want to chose colors against which your stamping will show so keep that in mind as you select them AND when you are spritzing. Remember, the more water, the lighter the shade.

When the colors are nice and juicy, “smoosh” your watercolor paper onto the glass mat. You can pick it up and shift it a bit and reapply, pressing lightly on the back. You do not want to move it around too much, though, because you want to keep those lovely swaths of color from getting muddy on your paper.

Spray your panel with water to create some of those delightful water spots and dab dry with a paper towel.

Now, stamp your images with some of the darker colors you used in your background. This will create a beautiful deep tone on light tone look that is reminiscent of those beautiful vintage fabrics and designs that are back in the spotlight these days.

Using a wet paint brush, add some more color to random petals and leaves to enhance that color over color look without losing any of that dreamy, soft effect.

NOTE: Melinda was loving this so much she shares two cards with us today – be sure to take a look at how the different colors she used to paint out the images look over each oxide ink watercolor background.

When your works of art are completely dry, ink up bits of areas of our French Script background and stamp with a soft grey or brown – whichever color works best with your design. To add even more of a vintage feel, spatter your panels with some white paint – acrylic mixed with a little water does a nice job.

As we said Melinda was having a blast so she ended up creating three panels! For two of her cards, she cut the panel with one of the dies from our Inside Scallop Frame set and popped it up with dimensional adhesive.

For the other, she cut a piece of cream card stock with the largest of our Nested Scallop with Half Holes die and layered her panel over that.

She added her completed pieces to card bases. For both cards with the popped up panels, Melinda cut white card stock scraps with our Wishes die and stamped her sentiment from our Shadow Words set, trimming it down, and adhering them to her card front with dimensional adhesive. For her third, Melinda stamped her sentiment onto some vellum and popped it on her card with some pretty thread looped behind it.

Here are all the goodies from the store that Melinda used today:

There you have it – so easy and you can see knowing how to create oxide ink watercolor background is another fabulous way to create a beautiful background to set off your favorite images. Have fun trying this out!