Serene Stripes

I've been playing with a stencil for this week's cards.  If you saw my video run throughs of the new releases on facebook live this week then you'll have seen that I loved the serene stripes stencil from Newton's Nook in particular and had already done a really quick background with it to show on the video.  Well for my first card I've turned that background piece into a card.

Other than the inked background all I added was a sentiment using AlteNew's Happy Birthday die which I love as it's a big statement and the die is all in one piece so it's super easy to cut and use and makes a bold statement.  As I find I often miss a birthday by a day, when I don't turn the calendar over quickly enough, I find it useful to have belated cards ready to go, so I added a sentiment from Newton's Birthday Essentials and with a black matt to draw it all together we're good to go.

Now, when I cleaned the stencil, I did it on my desk on a sheet of scrap and just sprayed water over it and dabbed it dry with a paper towel.  When I lifted it up, I noticed that there was a beautiful watercolour effect background on my mucky scrap paper.   Soooo, I had another go to make a really soft background for a card.

I just used one colour of ink this time and really like the soft look you get (the trick is to cover it with water and dab it dry quickly so it doesn't bleed completely under the stencil)   I added a few splatters of bolder colour and finished with one of the super fun Llama's and punny sentiments from Sugar Pea Designs Llama Just Say set which I love the humour of.

Finally, one of the reasons I love this stencil is that the stripes can be used individually as borders rather than a whole background so I made another card using less of the stencil and leaving more white space.

I added a die cut frenzy of cacti using the back in stock die from Lil' Inker Designs (So Prickly Cactus set) which is super easy to piece together to make a brilliant scene.  The sentiment is actually from Concord and 9th's Stuck on You set and is a block sentiment but I just snipped it into 3 lines so I could make it one long sentiment instead on the thin black shelf.

NEWS FROM THE STORE

It will be a quieter week for arrivals this week  although we will have a couple of new things:

•  Stamping Bella, will hopefully be here mid-to end of the week - it should have shipped on Friday but sadly the courier failed to show up so it will ship tomorrow.

• I have emailed AlteNew twice this week to chase our shipment which we have been waiting for them to process for nearly 10 days now.  Hopefully they will finally get it packed and shipped early this week so there is a chance it will arrive before the end of the week.

The quieter week will let us get some restock orders placed for Lawn Fawn and other brands so they will be coming soon.