Saturday, November 17, 2018

More Christmas Card Ideas with Stencils


It was a challenge to scan this Christmas card in a way that really shows the gleam of the textured silver acrylic paint and the red glitter that outlines the leaves; I did the best I could, and you'll just have to trust me that the original looks a lot better!


In making the above card, I used a sponge to apply the textured silver paint thru my 6"x 6" stencil Pressed Leaves, working on red background paper.  After that paint had dried, I cut off some edges around the leaves and glued the print onto a green greeting card blank.  My last touch was to outline the silver leaves with a red glitter pen.

Another Christmas card is below --




This time, I used my 4"x 4" stencil Fern Fronds Silhouette Mini

My first step was to secure the stencil to the 6"x6" greeting card blank, using masking tape.  Then, with an old credit card, I spread heavy-body silver metallic acrylic paint across the stencil.  

Once I lifted the stencil, I saw areas that weren't up to par.  So after the heavy-body silver paint had dried, I added glitter glue to some of the individual fronds (clicking on the image above, you can enlarge it to better see those areas.)  I also added squiggles in red glitter glue, creating a frame.  

Again I have to say that the original card looks a lot better than the scanned image above; it's indeed a challenge for me to capture the gleam of metallic paints, foils, etc.! 

Regarding the second greeting card above ... Because its deep bronze metallic cardstock is very dark, I lined the inside of the card with lightweight paper, cut to fit -- 


Above is what the inside of my cards looks like, after the light paper is added.

Other artists would probably skip that step and, instead, use white markers or pens to fill out the inside of these greeting cards.  (The blanks come from JAMPaper.com.) 

Check with the Postal Service before mailing 6"x 6" greeting cards -- there is a non-machinable surcharge for sending mail of these dimensions.  I make things easy for myself by simply using two Forever stamps.

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