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TUTORIALSTENCILTECHNIQUE

1/22/20244 min read

Would you like to experiment with a design like this? You'll find a supply list below, including a link to the stencils I used from A Colorful Life Designs. Follow the link and use discount code ChrisFan10 to save 10% on your entire order! (Master Creator Bundles are excluded as they already have a 20% discount built in.)

Let’s get started:

Card Base: 5.5 x 8.5, scored and folded at 4.25

Border: 5.5 x 4

Card Face: 5.5 x 3 7/8

Card Face:

I stamped the owl with Memento Ink, and coloured him with alcohol markers.
I stamped the owl again, but this time on masking paper. I carefully cut him out, including the space between the branch and his body. I removed the backing paper and covered him with the mask, being careful to line everything up.
I put the card front on the grip mat, and then laid the first stencil in place - this was the hills in the distance. I inked this up with jade green ink.
I removed that stencil and replaced it with the one with the evergreens. I inked this with a mid-tone green. Then I went back and applied spruce green ink to the tops of the trees to make them more distinct.
I had a bit of white area between the two stencils, so I grabbed the brush I had used for the jade ink and lightly brushed it over the white area, blending up into the hills.
I put the grip mat into my stamp positioner, positioned the card face again and then added three small evergreens with olive green ink, stamping a couple of times to get the intensity I wanted.
I removed those stamps and added the deciduous trees with the bare branches (one large stamp). I stamped this 3x with a medium brown ink.

Sadly at this point I realized that my paper had shifted. I recently purchased a Waffle Flower grip mat and was experimenting with using it in my positioner. I didn’t double check the placement before stamping the third time. I didn’t want to throw away all this work, so I had to find a way to pull the eye away from the error.

I corrected the grip mat and grabbed a larger single pine. Using a dark green ink only on the top portion I stamped several times. Then I used a dark brown on the trunk and stamped until the saturation matched the branches.
I removed the card face from the stamp positioner and used the residual ink on my light blue brush to soften the stark white of the cardstock on the ground under/between the trees.
I used a cloud edger stencil and a medium blue to create a cloudy sky.
I mixed acrylic white paint with a bit of water and spattered the snow over the scene.
After this had dried I used a white gel pen here and there to intensify a few of the snowflakes.

Other:

I grabbed a sentiment out of my Ready to Go *** binder, and added dimensional foam tape to the back.

See Ready to Go binder under Techniques in the header to learn how this tool saves me both time and money.

Assembly:

I glued the black border **** to the card base, centering vertically.
I glued the card face to this, again centering vertically.
I added the sentiment as shown.

**** See Cheating on Layers and Borders under Stretch your Pennies in the header.

Final Thoughts

I had two errors in this card as I created it - but I had put so much time into it that I decided to salvage it as best as I could!

First of course was the line of deciduous trees and the fact that the grip mat shifted on me. I could have cried!

Second, when I was mixing the acrylic paint with the water I didn’t mix well enough and during my first spatter a glob of paint landed beside the owl. This situation wasn’t as dire as I simply placed the sentiment strategically to cover it up!

In the end I’m happy with this effort - although the blurry trees bug me there is enough going on in the scene to distract from this.

The moral of this card (from my perspective) is Persistance Pays Off!

Supplies: (and links where possible)

I have listed which products I have used, and where they may be purchased. It's a huge marketplace and in most instances, there are multiple sources and many alternatives to choose from.

Stencil: All from A Colorful Life Designs:

Tree Line Edger 3,

Tree Line Edger 5,

Cloud Edger

Stamps:

Bernie, Unity Stamps

Sentiment: Simple Strips, Coffee, Taylored Expressions

Background Trees: various retired sets by Stampin' Up!

Masking Paper: Gina K Masking Magic, Scrapbook.com

Grip Mat, Waffle Flower, Scrapbook.com

Ink: Stampin’ Up!

Blending Brushes: Stampin’ Up!