Bokeh Christmas Card (and a few other samples)

Bokeh comes from the Japanese word boke (ボケ), which means “blur” or “haze”, or boke-aji, the “blur quality.”  Bokeh is pronounced BOH-Kə or BOH-kay and is defined as, “the effect of a soft, out-of-focus background that you get when shooting a subject, using a fast lens, at the widest aperture.”  Simply put, bokeh is the pleasing or aesthetic quality of out-of-focus blur in a photograph.  (See more HERE.)

To create this effect on a card, you ink a background and then sponge over that with white pigment ink through a stencil made with varying sized circles .  Here is a video tutorial showing exactly how this is done.

For the card above, I used Memento Blue Danube and Summer Sky inks, Tim Holtz Seedless Preserves Distress ink, and Tsukineko Brilliance Moonlight White Pigment Ink to create my bokeh background.  I layered several of the sentiment die cuts to help it stand out and added a few sequins to finish off my card.

Here are a few more:

The die used on this card is the Festive Mini Expressions Stacked Merry Christmas (CEDME014) by Creative Expressions. The background was sponged with Mowed Lawn Distress ink.

The stamp sets I used for the greeting and bow were both unbranded on this one and were heat embossed in black.  It is a good idea to do any heat embossing before the background sponging and bokeh technique are done because the embossing powder will stick to any ink that is not completely dry.   Background inks were Memento Dandelion, Tangelo, and Lilac Posies.

The Mod Squad Challenge for the next two weeks is “Sentiment Says It All” where the challenge is to have the sentiment take center stage.  All of these samples feature a sentiment on the bokeh background!

Thanks for checking out my card projects!

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