Rainbow bright

Our new challenge at the Christmas Card Throwdown is colours - and we're looking for a rainbow! (Or at least five colours.)

I've been seeing lots of videos on making gorgeous painty backgrounds recently, so wanted to try for myself. I pulled out acrylic paint in the seven colours, along with a small brush and card cut to size for a 6x6 card blank.

Working from top left, I dry brushed the paint on, horizontally and vertically. I managed to get several blurry photos of the result, this is the best one!

Using the same paint from the palette, I sponged it onto my favourite old holly stamp, and over stamped the background. I started with first generation in the red area, but that was too blotchy, second generation was better. So I painted over the offending holly with the red, then with white as it had become too solid, then more red until I was happy. The joy of using acrylic rather than ink!

At this point I wasn't in love with how it looked, it was a bit messy and wasn't working particularly well. So I added some white lines to lighten it, applied using the side of a piece of cardboard.

That was better - the mess is starting to look more grungy.

To go onto the background, I die cut a Spellbinders Christmas tree, and a "Seasons Greetings" sentiment, from hint of silver Centura Pearl.

I also blended round the edge of the background with vintage photo distress ink, and then edged in brown sharpie pen.

I cut a mount layer from the same Centura Pearl card, and constructed with a tape pen and a zig glue pen.

For something I was unsure about all the way through, I'm really pleased with the final result. Just shows that sometimes you have to keep going!




To join in with our rainbow card challenge head over to the Christmas Card Throwdown. You have until Midnight BST on Friday 4th August (slightly longer than usual!) to enter. We'd love to see what colourful creations you come up with.