How To Create A Northern Lights Card

Did you know that you can use ink blending to create a gorgeous Northern Lights card background?

We are thrilled to have our friend Jessica here today to show us how she made this amazing Northern Lights scene for the Essentials by Ellen Lil’ Squatch!

Hello!  Jessica Frost-Ballas here from All the Sparkle and I’m so excited to be guesting for Ellen Hutson!  Today I’m sharing a northern lights tutorial featuring the adorable new Lil’ Squatch from the October Essentials by Ellen release!

To start I stamped the forest trees from Lil’ Squatch onto a stack of full sheet post-it notes and fussy cut them to create several masks.  I stamped the trees onto a slimline panel of white cardstock cut to 3.75” by 8” and masked them with one of the masks.  Then I stamped the trees two more times and masked those as well.  I also adhered a hilly slope mask cut from Gina K Masking Paper to the bottom of the panel.

Then I carefully blended milled lavender, picked raspberry, and wilted violet distress oxide ink above my trees to create my northern lights.  Once I was finished with those colors I added chipped sapphire and black soot distress oxide ink along the top of my panel and the horizon line and then blended the colors together to create a smoother transition.  I let the blended panel dry and then splattered water across the panel concentrating it on the areas of chipped sapphire and black soot.  I also splattered the same areas of the panel with copic opaque white and let it dry completely.

While that was drying I stamped the little sasquatch onto white cardstock with intense black ink and colored him with copic markers.  I used shades of E40, E70, E71, E74, and E77 for his skin and fur.  When I was done coloring I die-cut him with the coordinating die.

After the blended panel was dry I carefully peeled off the masks.  Then I colored the pine trees using BG72, BG75, BG78, E44, E47, and E49.  I varied the different shades of dark greens and browns to create a little dimension in my forest.  Then I added a little more shading with warm grey copics to create snow banks throughout my scene.  Next I stamped the sasquatch’s footprints in the snow with second generation stamping using pumice stone distress oxide ink to create the look of fading footprints.  I also stamped a sentiment from Lil’ Squatch with intense black ink and then added my sasquatch with foam mounting tape.

Finally I wanted to really amp up the dimension in the scene so I added a little crystal glaze to the trees and sasquatch’s footprints and sprinkled the glaze with white puff embossing powder from Hero Arts.  When the powder heats up with a heat gun it really puffs up and looks like fluffy snow!

And that’s it!  I hope this inspires you to create your own northern lights scene and I hope you enjoyed my card.  Thanks so much to Ellen Hutson for inviting me to guest today and big thanks to you for stopping by!  Have a fantastic day!

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