So, its heading towards December, and yet again I am saying I shall not be making last minute cards in the week before Christmas. Hmmm, we shall see. These are the cards I made last year for friends, colleagues et al. This uses a brass stencil of baubles (Ling Studios BS162) with Gold or Silver embossing paste. I then sprinkled a little glitter over the wet paste and put aside to dry. The base card was covered with Christmas vellum, and the red panel is stamped using Inca stamp 1023-K Merry Christmas background.The Merry Christmas is from a Hero Arts set called Holiday Messages, which I think is discontinued, as I couldn't find them to link to. The message was cut out using a Nestabilities die and gold or silver ink run around the edges then matted onto more red card and fixed in place with a glue dot. The bauble image was trimmed and matted onto gold or black card and attached with foam pads. By the way, the stencil is actually longer than this, it has 10 baubles on it, but this would have been too long for my card base, so I masked off the bottom two with low-tack tape before stencilling.A tip for using stencil paste with brass stencils: It is very easy to bend brass stencils while cleaning them, so try to work with your stencil flat on your work space to clean them, rather than dropping into a bowl to scrub. Have some baby wipes flat on your work surface, and each time you use the stencil, lay it on the baby wipe and fold the wipe over it. This stops the paste drying. Then use another wipe to rub over your stencil ( both sides) to remove any paste before stencilling again. This stencil has some very fine lines so you may want to have a toothbrush handy to make sure there is no paste left in them. Then lay on a towel and again rub over it flat on your table to dry.
