Center Fade Ink Blending Gate Fold Card

I hope you guys aren't sick of gate fold cards because I'm surely not! Haha! I think they are such a fun way to bring some interest to a simple card! And they use the same amount of cardstock as a regular card base - just scored in a different way.

I started this card like I would any regular card - with a piece of 5.5" x 8.5" cardstock. Instead of scoring it in the middle I scored at 2 1/8" from each end and folded the flaps in to meet in the middle forming my gate fold card base. I taped the card onto my glass work surface and used 1/2" masking tape to mask off equally spaced 1/2" stripes on my card. I have a heavy hand when I blend inks, but I decided to push myself and try to do a center fade ink blending technique. I grabbed In Your Face Orange and Lantern Yellow hybrid inks from LDRS Creative and used ink blending tools to blend inks onto my card keeping the ink dark on the edges and using a light hand as I blended towards the center of the card. This gives me a cool highlight going down the center of my card! I kept the masking tape in place and added some black ink spatters with watercolor for texture.

The watercolor spatters bled through the front of the card base onto the inside of  my card - but that's no problem! LDRS Creative has tons of amazing 6x6 paper pads with cute patterns! I used the orange striped pattern from the new Sweater Weather 6x6 paper pad and the black checked pattern from the Sweet Sensations 6x6 paper pad. The Sweet Sensations paper pad is definitely not for Halloween, but I really encourage you to look at your summer products in a different way and use them outside of their intended seasons! I thought it would be difficult to write a message on the inside of the card with the patterned paper, so I die cut a piece of white cardstock with a die from the Scalloped Rectangle Frames die set and centered it on the inside of the card.

The background turned out kind of like candy corn, don't you think? It's a happy accident! Originally I was going to blend the orange on the outside and into the yellow on the inside and something made me want to alternate the colors and I'm so in love with the results! I stamped out the vampire boy image and some coordinating cuties from the Halloween High Jinks stamp set and colored them with alcohol inks and cut them out with the coordinating Halloween High Jinks die set. I arranged everything onto a die cut scalloped circle from the Scalloped Circle Frames die set. I glued the scalloped circle onto the front of the card making sure to only add glue to the left side of the circle so that I didn't glue the card shut.

I added some clear glitter to my images and that finishes this cute card! I hope you love it!