Been having a play with some stencil paste and Tim Holtz Layering stencils today. I thought this flourish design lends itself to so many useful cards, it all depends on the colour paste you use. I coloured white paste with pink and blue Memento inks to make the baby cards, and left it white for the two wedding ones.In all cases, I gave the wet paste a very light sprinkling of Glamour dust, just to add a gentle sparkle.
Useful things to know about this technique:
When colouring your paste- and you can colour white or Translucent- you can use a variety of mediums. Inkpads, reinkers and acrylic paints all work fine, and subtler shades can be achieved with mica powders. You can also add mica powders along with your inks/paints, for a pearly sheen. You can also add glitter, for sparkle that doesn't shed!
One thing to remember when using liquid colours to colour your paste is that the liquid will alter the consistency of the paste, so this is one case where you do not want to start with a little, and add till you've got the colour required. Acrylic paint will not be too bad, as it's not so liquid as ink, but with reinkers especially, go for a fairly dark colour, just adding a drop or two. You can always add a little more paste if you want to lighten it.Remember also, when adding to white paste it will lighten the colour anyway, and it will usually dry slightly lighter as well. Also, don't skimp on mixing up your custom colours. If you run out before finishing, you'll never mix exactly the same shade!Any leftover paste can be stored in small screwtop pots, and will last for a few months. If there is not enough to make that worthwhile, you can spread the excess onto a scrap of cardstock, using that to add all your waste paste to. Then, when dry, just cover with a sheet of hot foil, run through your laminator or foiling machine-you can even just iron it on- and you have a sheet of foiled card you can die cut sentiments from.
Use a fairly good thick cardstock to work on, as the moisture from the paste will cause thinner cardstock to buckle.
Here are some I've done in the past.
Also, Mylar stencils such as these are not going to lay as totally flat on your cardstock as metal ones, so more care needs to be taken when adding paste, so that it doesn't start to seep under the edges of the design. Try to add enough paste, and use a wide enough spreader to cover the design in one sweep. Too many spreading motions will increase the likelihood of the paste going under the lines.
Sweet Poppy have a fab wide spreader for this, and
Lucy Ellis of Sweet Poppy has some cool videos on You Tube showing how to get the best results.
Finally- cleaning your stencils. You want to do this as quickly as possible, and I take a sandwich box with warm soapy water in up to my craft room to drop them in, to save going up and downstairs to a sink every time I've used a stencil. Make sure you have a bowl/tub large enough to lay the stencils flat in. Keeping them flat while washing & drying is really critical to keeping them in good condition. The paste comes off easily if you do it straight away. I have found that the Cosmic Shimmer glitter pastes are really difficult to remove if they start to dry on your stencil,so speedily dropping into water is important. I have an old towel on a work surface, and stand the tub on that. A small nailbrush is ideal for removing the paste, then I lay it onto the towel, and PAT dry. That's important, especially if the stencil has unattached parts, like the Flourish one does. If you bend parts through rubbing, they will always let paste/ink etc seep under the design. This applies to metal ones with unattached parts too, not just Mylar.
So, back to the cards. The card bases are topfold, half A4 sheets, which end up as 5¾ x 4⅛. The cardstock I used for the stencilling was 6 x 4 so I had a little to trim down to tidy it up. I finally trimmed the panels to 5¾ x 3⅜.
As the panels were narrower than my base card, I decided to die cut some borders, you could also use border punches, of course.
I made some choices from this set by Spellbinders, called Shapeabilities On The Edge. They are just a hair longer than my panels,but these dies are fully repeatable, so you can make a border as long as you need.
I chose pearl papers and cut the edges twice for each card, then split down the middle. The pink one, which was the second up from the bottom in the dies, actually gives you two for one- you could easily use the offcut as a border too.
The pearl papers came from some paper blocks I bought years ago at the NEC, from a company called Craftwork Cards, who sadly no longer exist.They are really useful for borders, or for punching from.
The strips were attached to the back of each panel, along the edges, with dst, then trimmed down to fit.
All four done.
Now they just need mounting onto the card fronts, and again I used DST for this. Remember to add tape to all 4 sides, as there will always be a little warping of the cardstock from the paste. If you are a wet glue user, I'd recommend laying them down with a weight on top for half an hour or so.
Now to add a sentiment, and I chose to use these
Crealies Text dies for the baby cards. They are a small die, but the perfect size for these cards. there is quite a selection of sentiments available too. The 'A New Baby' sentiment is one die, but the three words are all separate, which I love as that gives you freedom of placement. I cut the die 4 times from white scrap card, then once each from the pink & blue pearl paper I used for the borders. This was so I could layer up the white die cuts twice, then add the
colour on top, for a little dimension.
I have some stitched banner dies, from Aliexpress, and used the smallest size from the long set for this. It was actually a little longer than I wanted, but the bottom set was a little too short. I sorted that by just replacing the banner in the die, matching up the stitched lines, then trimming it shorter.
A simple fix. You may notice than I am cutting down into my bottom plate in my 'Bug. I saw a few crafters switching the order of their plates, putting the 'B' plate on the bottom, and the 'C' plate on the top. This is great, as you can see exactly what you are cutting, so makes precise placing easy. I'd lain my words on the banner first to decide how much shorter it needed to be.
A ZIG glue pen- in fact any glue pen- is ideal for layering up the words, and for attaching to the banner. Again, laying them down under a couple of acrylic blocks for a few minutes helps them set.
To add them to the card front, I used a few foam pads. Because the surface is uneven, and glittery, both of which can cause problems with adhering stuff, I added a small dab of Pinflair Glue Gel to the top of each foam pad. This helps to make sure it will stick to the awkward surface, and also gives you a little wriggle room to position it straight.
I decided the banners needed a little something else, so added an acrylic heart to each. I used a clear one for the blue card, as the only blue hearts I had were not close enough in colour to the blue used in the card.
For the wedding cards, I used the same banner die, but added the sentiment with peel offs, as there currently isn't a wedding die in the Crealies line. I have emailed to ask her about the possibility,though. 😀 A small white half pearl was added with some Glossy Accents.
Putting all of those snowflakes to good use, and this is the first 3 cards made using them. They were inspired by a card I spotted on Pinterest back last week.
I also had to do each one in two sittings, as the stencil wasn't long enough for my card front, but they only take about an hour to dry.I tried with the first one doing the whole strip, but it's impossible to do without smudging the paste you've already laid down.
