Inspire Me Monday: Gradient Stained Glass

Good morning Power Poppy Fans! It’s Christine greeting you on this Monday morning. I’m so excited to help kick off this week’s New Releases with an Inspire Me Monday Tutorial. It's a SUPER sneak peek of a set that will be releasing this week, called Orchids Rock, and it is amazing.  

Today I’m going to show you a twist on a beaded stained glass window, making use of a gradient theme.  Gradient is the change from light to dark or gradual change of colour in an image.  Using the theme of a stained glass window in this way, is a new twist I thought I’d try.  I love how it turned out, it’s a very elegant way to show off a beautiful design.  

I began by stamping and colouring the image, here I’ve used the beautiful lady slipper orchid stamp.  Then I took out my Standard Circles Spellbinders die and a Copic Multi-liner and traced around the outer edge of the circle and inner edge of the circle.  You just want to be careful to take your time and hold the die firmly.  I mainly wanted to give it a framed feel, like a stained glass border.  From here I took the two main colours of deep burgundy and deep green and coloured out the opposite sides of the border in an Ombre style.  Deepest colors at the bottom and top and then fading out to softer colours at the middle.  You can see a bit of the border colour in the following step.  

Next I grabbed some Sticky Strip.  Though Scor Tape is my go to for most crafting, on this style of card you need a very firm clear adhesive tape, so I’ve found Sticky Strip works best.  

In the middle of my image I placed three strips of tape, butted firmly together, leaving a section of white-space open.  Then I placed two strips of tape together, another white space and then finally one strip of tape toward both the bottom and top of the image.  So, thickest gradient in the middle moving out to thinner gradient strips along the bottom and top.  

You’ll want to be sure that wherever your tape lands is where you want it.  You can’t pull it back up once it’s down or it will tear your image.  After all the tape was secure and smoothed down with my fingers I trimmed off the pieces that were stuck over the edge.  Use a good sharp scissor for cutting off the edges, the sticky strip is really sticky.  

Next, you’ll want to grab some sort of container with sides, I just grabbed a ziplock style leftover container.  Peel off the top layer of your sticky strip and lay it in the bottom of your container, sticky side up.   Then you’ll need some clear micro-beads (if you’re like me, you have some lying around in your craft drawers too).  

Carefully pour your beads onto your sticky image.  You’ll want every bit of the sticky spots covered with micro-beads, so use your fingers to make sure it’s completely covered.  Then turn your image upside down in the dish and gently push on every part of the image to make sure your beads are firmly adhered and evenly burnished onto your image.   You want the beads to be smooth.  

Just look how pretty it is!  The gradiant areas really give that stained glass feel to the design, but I also like how the other areas are also peeking through.  It is such a great effect.  

Here are a couple of pictures of the finished card design.  I placed the image onto a belly-band style card where the scalloped section pulls out.  

The micro-beads give it a light reflective, glittery effect that’s really lovely.  

Here are the Copics I used for colouring the image.  

Tomorrow you’ll see so much more from this beautiful set, and a lot of creativity from the Power Poppy Team all week long!  We can’t wait to show you all of the beautiful things Marcy has created for us to work with!  See you then!