Alcohol Marker Backgrounds – Simple & Stunning

Welcome! Do you enjoy creating backgrounds for your card projects? There are so many ways to make nice backgrounds, and today I want to share a beautiful technique for creating alcohol marker backgrounds. It’s so simple, yet creates stunning results.

Alcohol Marker Backgrounds Video

Watch along here to see exactly how I created these stunning backgrounds.

Materials Needed

To try this technique, you’ll need vellum, Blends alcohol markers, rubbing alcohol, and some optional items like a water painter, spritzer, heat tool, and paintbrush. The exact materials you’ll want will depend on what you have available and how much you want to experiment!

Blends Alcohol Markers

If you’re new to alcohol markers, I’ll quickly mention that Blends alcohol markers are different from water-based markers. They’re designed for blending, and the result when coloring with them is deep and rich colors. These markers are also permanent on non-porous surfaces such as plastic or foil papers. You can learn all about Blends markers here.

Creating Alcohol Marker Backgrounds

To create backgrounds such as these, I tried three different methods. I’ll describe them below.

1. Dabbing

First, use your Blends markers to color patches onto vellum. Use one color or a few. Then use a paintbrush, dip it into rubbing alcohol, and ‘dab’ it onto the vellum. Wipe the brush on a shammy or baby wipe to remove the color, then dip back into the alcohol and repeat until you have dabbed most or all of the vellum.

2. Water Painting

This is similar to the first technique, but I used a water painter to more carefully paint rubbing alcohol between the colors.

3. Spritzing

This one is so fun! Color patches of a single color onto the vellum. Next, spray rubbing alcohol onto the vellum using a spritzer. Move the color around using a heat tool or by lifting and moving the paper, by blowing through a straw, or using a bulb syringe to blow it. Repeat with another color if desired.

Sample Colors

Are you wondering what color combinations to try? Here are a few that I created.

Light Highland Heather and Dark Balmy Blue

Dark Poppy Parade and Light Melon Mambo

Light Granny Apple Green and Dark Pool Party

Dark Mango Melody and Dark Flirty Flamingo

Dark Poppy Parade and Dark Pumpkin Pie

Aren’t these gorgeous? Next I’ll share a few tips for making beautiful backgrounds.

Helpful Tips

Here are a few things I suggest as you’re creating these beautiful alcohol marker backgrounds…

*Tape your vellum to your work surface. This prevents the vellum from curling.

*Play around with the amount of ink, colors, amount of rubbing alcohol, and method of drying your creations.

*Start with a larger piece of vellum than you want to use on your finished project. This allows you to trim edges once done.

*My favorite adhesive for attaching these to cardstock is regular Seal adhesive, since it typically doesn’t show through the vellum.

*Attaching these backgrounds over light colored cardstock typically allows the adhesive to show through less than using dark colored cardstock.

*Play around with the color of cardstock you lay under the vellum for different effects.

*Try this on different specialty papers like foils and window sheets!

The sample below was created with Dark Melon Mambo and Dark Calypso Coral markers onto a piece of acetate window sheet.

This sample used copper foil cardstock with Crumb Cake and Mossy Meadow markers.

It’s such a fun technique – I hope you’ll try it!

Products Used

Here are the supplies I used to create these beautiful backgrounds.

Product List

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Stop back soon to see ideas for ways to use these amazing alcohol marker backgrounds!