Rainbow Inked Floral Letterpress

Hello! Jen Kotas here today with a Mother’s Day card made using one of my favorite inking techniques for letterpress and foil plates. The Floral Border Letterpress and Foil Plate works beautifully for this technique and frames up a die cut image perfectly!

A few tips to remember when doing this technique:

• First, if you like your rainbow to still appear clockwise you’ll need to ink the plate up counterclockwise. 
• Second, non-BetterPress Inks like the core inks I used here may be juicier and have softer pads so use a gentler hand when applying the ink. 
• Third, while it’s not necessary, using the ink cubes makes this technique much easier. 

1. Ink the first section of the Floral Border Letterpress and Foil Plate with the desired color, overlapping into the next section a bit. 

2. Ink plate with second color gently tapping back and forth where colors overlap until a nice blend is achieved. 

3. Repeat step 2 until entire plate is inked. I used Azalea, Papaya, Dandelion, Fresh Lawn, Cornflower and Passion Flower Ink Cubes. Run through die cutting machine. 

4. Die cut the rabbit and carrot from the Rabbit Pair Fancy Dies out of Antique Ivory, Papaya and Shamrock Cardstock.

5. Cut off the top of the papaya carrot and adhere over the shamrock carrot.

6. Stamp the sentiment from Happy Easter Stamp & Cut XL with Intens-ified Black Ink and cut into a strip. 

7. Add light pink alcohol ink marker to rabbit’s ears, nose and cheeks. 

8. Cut panel to 4 x 5 1/4” and adhere to an A2 card base. Add sentiment and rabbit with thin foam squares. 

9. Finish card with white gel pen highlights and Translucent Enamel Dots to the flower centers. Colors used for the enamel dots are: Translucent Sunset, Translucent Greens, Translucent Blues, Translucent Purples and Translucent Pinks.

Sometimes, there’s a line where the color changes, no matter how hard you try. Cover it up like I did here over the green and yellow transition!