"Simply Super Stencils"

Themed Friday's Instagram Hop #55, hosted by @touchofmagic every 2nd Friday at 11 AM ET

@scrappystampthefunup

Hi crafty peeps!  New (well, not new) address for my blog so make sure you update your bookmark!  I am going back to my Blogger.com for by blogging projects, to make things easier and roomier for my soon to be launched paper crafting community "The Paper Creative LLC."  So, thanks for being patient and updating my address so you don't miss any of my crafty shenanigans :)

Ok, on to the project for this Hop!

This card has a 5"x7" base of 80lb Neenah Classic Crest Solar White card stock. The stenciled artwork was done on a 5"x7" panel of 110lb Neenah Classic Crest Solar White card stock. When I am doing card projects that could end up getting weighty with mediums, I always do them on a 110 panel of Neenah-it's the best cardstock in my opinion.

I wanted to use many different techniques for as many different stencils as I could get into this project so there's a lot of steps to this one. But any of these techniques can be used independently on any project.

First, I chose the greens and yellow from my spring 2025 chosen palette.

I used a really swirly stencil by Gina K. Designs, and ink blended the yellow into the greens for a soft, fresh ombre tone. Now, the stencil isn't long enough to cover the entire panel, so, I left an open space to add some decorative embellishment strips, and continued the ink blending past that:

I went through my colored cardstock scraps for some fresh yellows to compliment the background. And I wanted a lighter strip to lay over a darker strip.

Now, I am a huge fan of tone-on-tone especially with stenciling, but with the colors from my spring palette, I didn't have yellows dark enough to give a good monochromatic tone to these yellow strips. So, I used Altenew Embossing Paste and mixed into it Altenew Artist Marker refills in Warm Sunshine to make a nice soft yellow paste, and then I mixed their Artist Marker refills in Mango Smoothie and Crimson to make a bright orange paste. I used two different floral patterned Tim Holtz stencils from Stamper's Anonymous, one stencil with a smaller detailed pattern for the yellow paste on the wider dark yellow strip and one with a larger floral pattern for the orange paste for the top light-yellow strip. This layering of the large over the small pattern stencil helps lift the strips to become a bold focal point.

I lay these aside for the paste to set up, taping them down to a tabletop surface so the cardstock didn't curl while the paste dried. Now, to add some snazziness to the ombré stenciled panel, I replaced the stencil and, using Altenew metallic ink spray in Antique Gold, I generously spritzed over the panel. I may have gotten a bit aggressive with my application because I did get some larger gilded spots, but in the end, I like how it was like adding more texture than I had expected to get.

Once the pasted-up panels were dry I did the same thing the orange top strip: set the stencil over the paste and spritzed it with the gold spray.

To the bottom darker strip, I used a medium pink ink to rub over the entire surface of the pasted area, and a darker pink to add depth to the pasted areas along the edges of the strip.

I also used this dark pink to run along the edge of both strips just to add some definition. Now I placed them over the white area on the panel, glued them down and trimmed the top and bottom of them.

For the sentiment I used a scrap of the light-yellow cardstock and stenciled over it with the yellow ink from my palette. I cut this with a label die from Sizzix Thinlets "Labels" by Tim Holtz and stamped the sentiment in Altenew Obsidian Black pigment ink using a sentiment stamp from the Altenew mini delight set "Butterfly Dreams." I adhered it to the top yellow strip with adhesive foam tape.

I hope you got some ideas for new ways of using your stencils from this project. And also, I hope you check out the hop for even more inspiration from some amazing crafters! Again, don't forget to replace this address as my new blog space!  To snag any of the Altenew products I used in this project, click the link below. See you soon here at Stamp the Fun Up!

https://altenew.com/6442205