Eclipse cards (and a cool background technique)

Hey Tea-Timers, welcome to another step-by-step tutorial! This month, I've made an "eclipse" card - have you ever seen this technique before? The eclipse technique is where you die cut something (usually a sentiment) from your background, and elevate it, so that it becomes visible.

Here's the supplies that I used:

• Autumn Leaves stencil
• White pigment ink and Aged Mahogany distress oxide
• Blender brushes
• Love you Lots large sentiment die
• Woodland Critters stamp set
• Copic friendly black ink (I used Gina K's Obsidian Amalgam ink)
• Alcohol markers or other colouring medium
• White gel pen
• Kraft cardstock and a white 6x6" card base

Instructions

(If you prefer to see a video tutorial, please check out the Time for Tea YouTube channel, here: https://www.youtube.com/c/TimeForTeaDesigns)

1. First, let's make our background. Take the autumn leaves stencil, and apply the white pigment ink on to your kraft cardstock. Give the stencil a clean so it doesn't contaminate your next inkpad (also, I'd highly recommend having a separate blending brush just for white pigment ink as it is so concentrated and slow to dry). 

2. Place the stencil back over your white inking, then shift it slightly to the right, and slightly down. Now, apply Aged Mahogany distress oxide through the stencil. You'll probably need quite a heavy application to cover the pigment ink!

3. Trim the background down to about 5.5" x 5.5".  

4. Die cut the Love You Lots sentiment from the centre of the background, and also six times from white cardstock. Be sure to keep all of the little centre pieces from the patterned background - we'll need these later.

5. Glue the background piece to a white card blank, then glue one of the white die cuts in the space in the centre, where the sentiment has been die cut out.

6. Next, grab all of the little cut-out pieces from the patterned background. We'll be gluing these into the spaces between the words/letters. I quite enjoy this, as it's like completing a jigsaw puzzle. You'll need to make sure they are glued in the right way up, so that the picture remains complete - I referred to my patterned die cut for reference if I wasn't sure which way round some of the pieces (the circles) went.

7. Once these are in place, glue the remaining white die cuts on top of the first, then add the patterned die cut over the top. This will complete our picture and from above, you will barely be able to see the sentiment camouflaged into the background. However, tilt the card to the side, and you'll see all the dimension underneath, revealing the sentiment clearly!

8. You could definitely leave your card as-is at this stage, but I decided to add some woodland critters, which I stamped with Copic-friendly ink, then coloured with the following Copics:

Fox's body: YR27, YR24, Y26, Y23

Fox's face/tail: W1, W0

Fox's ears / hedgehog's cheeks: R20

Hedgehog's body: E27, E25, E23

Hedgehog's tummy: E35, E33, E31

Flower: R01

9. I fussy cut the critters and added them with foam dots, then stamped and trimmed down the sentiment, and also added that with foam tape beneath the main sentiment.

I hope this inspires you to try eclipse cards, or even just the pigment ink background!

You can use discount code T4TJAYNE10 for 10% off your order at the T4T store.

Happy crafting!

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