I saw a video posted by card crafter where she used (non-SU!) stencils, blending brushes and inks to create some quick cards. A lightbulb went off in my mind, and I decided to see what I could do with Stampin’ Up! products. I decided to pull out the Christmas Lights stamp set and its coordinating Twinkling Lights Dies.
At first I thought I’d keep it super-simple, and just use the stencilled snowflakes on a plain card front, along with a sentiment from the sister stamp set, Brightest Glow. As you can see from the picture below, I did wind up cutting down one of the cards that I had a big boo-boo on, turning it into 2 layers for some Balmy Blue card bases.
I liked these well enough (so much that I thought the cards were finished…embellishments and everything!), but over the course of the next 24 hours I realised that they just seemed too plain.
So I went back and added the stamped image that the die was intended to cut out:
Even though my stamping is quite imperfect I like this much more. Had I realised before I added embellishments that I wanted to add the stamped snowflakes I would have used either the Stamparatus or even my long-retired Stamp-A-Ma-Jig to get better image alignment (and avoid that one shadow/stamp edge…grrr!
Here’s the stencil I made from the backer board from some DSP. I did wind up cutting out the little “arms” of the snowflake inside the die cut because they just kept moving around and being in the way. I used the washi tape on the left edge as a hinge, and the ones on the right corners to hold everything down while I used my Blending Brushes. You can see I started on the stencil to avoid dark blotches of ink on my cardstock.
It took me under half an hour all told to make these 6 cards, and now I have a nice little stash of cards for Northern Hemisphere friends who will appreciate receiving a non-Christmas holiday card.
Here’s my supply list – everything is available to purchase in my Online Store. Note: The Christmas Lights Bundle is retiring at the end of this Mini Catalogue (4 Jan.). The Twinkling Lights Dies that are part of the Christmas Lights Bundle go on sale at 40% off starting Thursday, 1 December, while supplies last!
That’s a great idea Nancy!