Wednesday 18 March 2015

Bokeh technique with Big Day



At Crafty Friday (my easygoing Friday morning class) this month, we played with the bokeh technique. 

Like many fabulous ideas, the word ‘bokeh’ comes from Japan and literally means ‘blur’. You see this effect in photography, in the out-of-focus sections of an image. Sometimes this creates circles of light, which is the look we are going for when trying this technique. 

It looks like a complicated technique but it really isn’t.  All you have to do is create a multi-coloured background and then sponge the circles in Whisper White craft ink on top, using a template or stencil. 

We tried two ways of creating the background: watercolour paper and reinkers was the first; sponging on Whisper White was the second. 

This is the watercolour paper technique and I followed an excellent tutorial by Diane Dimich.  After wetting a piece of watercolour paper, we dabbed small amount of ink onto it, to watch it spread. As Diane says in her tutorial, keep going until the whole surface is covered, and the colours will blend into each other. 

Once this was dry (we speeded it up with a heat gun), we sponged through some Window Sheets to create the circles. These look best when overlapped in certain places, but you have to let the ink dry or be very careful not to spread the white around when you move your template. 

And that’s it! This was the first time I’d tried this technique and I was really happy with the way it turned out. I used it to create this card for my downline, Alison (Patsy), whose birthday is today. Sadly, I completely forgot to post it to her so she’ll have to wait! 


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