Bokeh backgrounds

I'll admit to succumbing to the latest fad trend in papercrafting... bokeh backgrounds.  If you want a proper explanation you'll have to google but basically it's a photography term and involves sort of balls/halos of light.  There are several how to's on the net, Eileen Godwin has a nice one this week and there are a few on youtube. 

For this one I challenged myself to use colours I really don't like (as you might have guessed if you're a reg I like cool tones of blues & purples as a rule) so went with barn door, honey & mahogany distress inks blended over some white card before doing the old splatter some water over trick.  Once dry I sponged through my own stencil (nowt but some acetate I'd had a go at with a very old ctmh circle cutting system but stencil sounds posher lol) with Brilliance white pigment ink then left to dry before stamping with an IndigoBlu stamp set, Wild Meadow with black archival ink.  Now I have to say in real life the circles are a lot more subtle but brilliance is a slightly pearlescent ink and the camera is picking up the shine quite heavily.  As often happens when using a white ink/stain/gesso the coloured ink seems to sink below the white pigment. 

With the benefit of hindsight I wouldn't have used the dandelion stamp because the white pigment has caused it to lose the delicate detail. I don't know that I would use this white ink on a warm toned background again either, maybe PTIs cream or maybe keep the stencil in place and go over the white with a pale lemon or orange.  btw I found the SU white ink to be pretty useless over distress inks and now have some orange ink sat on the top of the pad where it transferred.  Can't say as I'm hugely happy with this card but my blog would be even lighter than it is now if I only added the cards I was truly happy with lol.

I'm going to enter this one into this months IndigoBlu challenge which is to use a Touch of Red.