Purre Love & Gold Marbled Background How-To

Happy Hump Day! My alcohol inks were sitting around unused for quite a while now. Some how I did not find the time to sit and play with them. Until two days ago when I had trouble falling a sleep and decided to have some night time fun in my craft room - LOL-

A while ago I saw a video on YouTube (unfortunately I can't remember from whom) where someone made an alcohol ink background and then used gold foil on top of it. This looked so very pretty that I had to try! It is very easy too! Here is how it turned out and I'll explain below how I did it.

Isn't this pretty? IRL the shine of the gold foil is amazing! It's hard to catch all the shine in the photo but I think you can get an idea. I used YUPO paper for this technique.
YUPO is a non-porous plastic kind of paper. Ranger sells it in the tim Holtz line as well as other companies. I bought mine from Amazone, I think the brand is Legion. It was a better deal than the Tim Holtz Yupo. It is not real paper nor cardstock, it's made from plastic. This is the perfect surface for the alcohol ink.

I dropped different pink and purple colored alcohol inks onto a piece of YUPO paper together with alcohol blending solution. I used Rangers alcohol inks for this. To move the ink around you can use a straw or an air puffer tool but I used my Copic air brush tool (without a pen in there of course) and my compressor. I added ink and blending solution until I was happy with the look of my background. Then I waited just a little bit to let the ink starting to dry. 1 to 2 minutes max. depending how warm or cool the room is you are working in. The spots where the ink is pooling together stay wet longer and is kind of sticky, this is what we use to make the gold foil stick. I added the ink and then moved it around using the air blowing from my airbush tool to create smaller and larger areas of "ink clusters".

Now take a piece of gold foil (the one you would normally use with a laminator, mink machine or special gel to make it stick) and put it on top of your background. With your fingers smooth it out and apply some pressure carefully. Do not use your fingernails to rub it down this will ruin your alcohol ink background. Believe me I know first hand - hahaha. If you use your nails you will see ugly marks on your alcohol ink background later! Now peel it off and voila! The gold foil is sticking to all the wet/sticky areas and you have a beautiful gold marbled looking background.

The stamps I used to create my card are from Whimsy's Purre Love clear set and You're my favorite sentiment set - both by Deb Davis from Amped to Stamp.

I stamped onto water color paper, colored with distress inks and fussy cut the images. Some purple and gold sequins finish off my card. Whimsy products used are linked below.

Whimsy products used:
(Affiliated links used - clicking one of these links is absolutely at NO cost to you.)