Stretch your stencils and say what you want!

Hi everybody,

Jill here, and...HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

I'm starting the year with a nice, bright and cheerful card to add a little light to these dark winter days (they don't half mess with my crafting time!)...

...using Echo Park's Hearts Stencils and Lawn Fawn's Quinn's abc's (lower case).

I LOVE this Heart's Stencil, and use it A LOT, so decided to stretch it's use and use the reverse side of it.  I spread and smudged my ink all over my actual stencil, spritzed it with water, and pressed my card onto it to pick up the print; an old but brilliant technique that means you get two designs for the price of one on all of your stencils!  Once dry, I took my Quinn's lower case abc's from Lawn Fawn, and cut my sentiment from the front, taking care to keep all the fiddly bits from inside the letters so I could add them back in.

I inked up another piece of card to use as my background, and adhered a piece of vellum behind my cut-out letters to mute the effect.  I inked another piece of card to match my background, and cut these gorgeous little sprigs using Reverse Confetti's Layered Laurel's Confetti Cuts to draw your eye in.  I added a wrap of twine and a little heart, cut using Paper Smooches Tiny Hearts and embossed in Silver Sparkle powder, to finish off my design.

I mounted my piece onto a card blank, and there you have it.

I really hope you like it, and I can't wait to see what amazing creations you all come up with in 2017!  As always, everything I used is linked below.

See you next week.

Jillx

  

  

Smile and shimmer with textured Starry Watercolour.

Hi everybody,

Jill here, and this week, I'm shimmering up some texture paste...

...using the ever giving, Gansai Tambi Starry Colours Watercolour set.

This beautiful watercolour set's talents seem to know no bounds, so I was excited to see how they would react with some transparent texture paste, whether the gorgeous shimmer would shine through, and boy oh boy was I thrilled with the results.

Those bad boys shone through like the twinkling magic stardust they are!

I started with a quick watercolour wash (I know, shock horror!), across my background and set to dry.  I then got my Starry Watercolours pan set nice and wet, and added a good amount of product to my craft mat.  I then added a nice dollop of some clear texture paste to it, and mixed it up well.  I used the Hearts Stencil from Echo Park, and smooshed my starry shimmery texture paste over the top using a palette knife making sure not to cover the whole thing, I wanted to cover a corner and kind of fade off leaving some nice white space.

I then cut my 'Smile' sentiment from Lawn Fawn and gave it a couple of coats of gold embossing powder for even more dimension.  I finished my sentiment with this 'it's your birthday' from Lawn Fawn's Year Six, an awesome little cute set worth the money for this sentiment alone - so handy in finishing messages off!  I stamped it onto vellum and, after adding a twirl of metallic thread underneath and the addition of a grey piece of card to ground everything, adhered onto my card front.

I matted onto some patterned paper from my stash, and mounted onto a grey card base, keeping everything up in the corner to help balance my elements out.

I added a wee little black enamel heart to tie everything together and there you have it.

It's hard to show in pictures just how shimmery the Gansai Tambi Starry Watercolours are, but when they catch the light, they really are just utterly stunning, and being able to use them along side so much of your crafty stash just makes them even more worthy of a space in your craft room!

As always, everything I have used is linked below so be sure to go check it out.

See you next week.

Jillx