Project of the Week ~ Bister Backgrounds

Karen here today and it’s my turn to do the Project of the Week for the Repeat Impressions‘ blog. I decided to share with you my favorite way to create backgrounds for my cards - using Bister powders and water.

The process is very easy to do and every card you create is unique. Bister is a water soluble wood stain powder in many different colors imported from The Netherlands and sold in the U.S. by I Brake for Stamps here. To create beautiful backgrounds, you simply sprinkle a few granules of the color or colors you choose onto a thick cardstock or water color paper, spritz with water and watch the colors appear. Let the paper dry or help it dry faster with a heat gun, then stamp or wet emboss your images onto the paper.

For my first card above, I chose blue and natural (brown) Bisters and created the blue sky and light brown for the ground. The brown tones in the sky parts happen sometimes even when the color I chose to use was blue, but still makes for a lovely somewhat stormy sky. I stamped Repeat Impressions #4221-K Deer Family Silhouette, #2719-K Lg Pine Tree, #2709-I Large Pine Forest, #4522-G Calm Water as my clouds and #3412-C Gulls in Flight to created this scenic card.

For my second card, I created a square Bisters background using yellow and brown Bister powders. The touch of green and blues appear somewhat magically. I stamped one of my favorite RI stamps, #5702-M Crowned Crane Deco with black ink and heat embossed the #5704-L Bamboo with white embossing powder. On the white base card, I stamped the bamboo with black ink and grey and stamped the #2504-H “Live, Laugh, Love” sentiment. I layered the Bister piece onto a black frame before attaching to the card base.

I was having way too much fun designing with Bisters and Repeat Impression’s stamps to stop, so I made one more card to share today. This time I used a textured water color paper, less Bister powders and more water to get a very light yellow and blue background. Then I heat embossed Repeat Impression’s beautiful floral bouquet #9706-U Flowers and colored the flowers with markers. I stamped the birthday sentiment #2502-I Wishing you joys and used a thin black marker to emphasize a few of the words.

So if you are looking for to make unique and lovely backgrounds for your cards, you may want to try Bister powders together with Repeat Impression’s stamps.

Karen