Welcome to those of you coming from the amazing Anna as well as those of you who regularly visit! Yep! The Squirrel Squad and I are back with another hop! As I'm sure you recall, each month we focus on a supply we've been squirreling away or a technique we haven't given a lot of time to. We also choose a theme to work around. This month we wanted to focus on stenciled cards that we could give to anyone (gender neutral) with any sentiment! This turned out to be ideal for me!
This theme tied in so well to something else I've been squirreling away. You see, I went through a phase last year where I realized I was really underutilizing my stencils, so I started experimenting and making a bunch of stenciled backgrounds. I even made a video series about it (check out Part 1 here)! But, I then squirreled away those backgrounds and never used any of them. After consulting with the squirrel squad, everyone agreed that I wasn't cheating by not making fresh backgrounds. If anything, I was very much leaning into the theme. I sorted through and picked out three that caught my eye immediately!
For this first one, I took the stencil and blended a pale beige ink through it so it would all be transferred onto the paper. After that, I grabbed my markers and started coloring the swirls in in groups. The tiny differences in the ink I'd blended on to begin with even helped give the swirls just a little more "texture". Finally, I went back with a white gel pen and drew in highlight lines along the curves, just to give it a little something extra. To turn this into a card, all I had to do was stamp a "hello" is matching green ink and die cut an oval around it. Some of the swirls do a great job of hugging the sentiment! I think anyone would enjoy this cheerful card in their mailbox!
When I'd worked on the original project, I remember wanting to make sure I was showing a couple of different ways to get different looks from the same stencil. This time, I blended a light blue ink through the stencil. I then took washi tape and made a frame around the center. I blended in a darker blue. When the tape was pulled away, it gave me a crisp rectangle perfect for highlighting a sentiment. I will admit in hindsight it might have worked better to have the center be the light blue. I worry that the sentiment doesn't "pop" enough on the darker blue with all the pattern. But I did my best to combat this with black ink and a chunky sentiment! Bonus: it's a nice one layer card that will be very resilient to mail!
Finally, I'd wanted to experiment with layering stencils that were not traditional layering stencils. This honeycomb seemed like a great choice! I blended a yellow through the stencil then shifted it until the pattern seemed to line up in a different pleasing way and stenciled over again. This reminds me of layers of honeycomb in a beekeeper's beehive: just one flat behind another. I decided this bee and this sentiment would be the perfect touch!. I did blend some extra yellow around the edges just to create a bit of a vignette. As my earlier pictures on Instagram will definitely attest, I love a vignette effect. Perhaps too much....
I hope you enjoyed seeing my creations! There is WAY more inspiration to come! Just keep hopping along! Next stop: the brilliant and talented Marie! if you love what we're doing, please leave a comment! We love it even more when you subscribe!