Bokeh Effect Anniversary

Hi all.  Yes, I know, I can hear you all saying 'not another anniversary card', but I had another family anniversary to make a card for and I have seen this technique used quite a bit recently so wanted to try it out.  The equivalent word for 'bokeh' in Japanese means blur or haze and refers to a technique used in photograhy where out of focus points of light are produced by a lens, sometimes accidentally and sometimes to give a certain effect.  I know the points of light should be round but as this is an anniversary card I thought I would make them heart shaped, just a bit of artistic license. 

I decided to make this a clean and simple card for the Happy Little Stampers two challenges which I am just in time to enter.  The first is Stencilling, and the second is this Sketch.

                                                                                 

I notice that the Guest Designer Nancy Littrell over at the HLS Challenge has used this technique on her card which I think must have stuck with me and given me the idea, although I must admit it wasn't until I looked at the challenge again after I had made the card and I went back to the beginning of the month to check it out that I remembered that this was one of the places I had seen it used, so I will credit her with giving me the idea.  

My piece of card was actually made with acrylic paints on the Gelli Plate.  I bought some cheap Docrafts paints in primary colours and used a small bit of Electric Blue and Canary Yellow straight on to the Gelli Plate and mixed it using a brayer.  I got a piece of bubble wrap and imprinted the pattern on to the wet paint and allowed it to dry.  When it was dry I used a buttermilk colour brayered over the top to refresh the paint and then using some gelli card I pulled the print. I found the gelli print colour was a bit uninspiring but I added some exra bits of Mowed Lawn and Mustard seed Distress Inks sponged on to give it a bit more punch.  I then used a stencil I made myself from a piece of acrylic and a small heart from a set by Nellie Snellen which I used on my last post and sponged white acrylic paint through it and overlapped the shapes to give a bit more depth.  I wasn't sure whether it had the right look as my paint was a bit thicker perhaps than a white pigment ink and covered the background a bit too heavily.  I then decided to add the odd bit of sponged Mowed Lawn and Picked Raspberry DI to highlight the white hearts and was happier with the finished look, although I think that the pattern from the bubble wrap can't really be seen now.

The central die cut is a Marianne Creatables die called Folklore.  I cut the first from the piece of Gelli printed card and I cut a second out of a snippet of Gold Mirri card and this one I embedded into the background card.

I finished by layering the background card on to a snippet of Gold Mirri card and stamped the sentiment using Brilliance Galaxy Gold Ink.

Thank you for taking a look at my blog today.

Pat x

I am also entering the following challenges:

Pixie's Crafty Workshop  - Week 174. Where we have to use up our snippets of card etc.
Inkspirational Challenge - the word prompt is 'Space', and my card has lots of white space.
Addicted to Stamps Challenge - Make your Mark.
Simon Says Monday Challenge - Anything Goes.
Simon Says Wednesday Challenge - Anything Goes.