Stencil-Print Christmas Cards... A Memory from Yesteryear

I've noticed – to my delight – that the round 8-inch Gelli Plate greatly changes the “look” usually achieved from making prints with stencils.  This happy fact stood out for me when I used my 9”X 12” stencil Facets ...

The first print shown above  --

 --reminds me of a stained-glass window.

I'd made this print starting with black-and-white patterned scrapbook paper; then I had layered red, orange and green acrylic paints over it with a brayer. 

Once that paint dried, I'd used my round Gelli Plate, a gesso-teal mix of acrylic paint, and my 9”X 12” stencil Facets to pull the print.

To make my first Christmas card, I covered a blank 5”X 7” greeting card with a background -- green mulberry paper embedded with gold threads of tinsel.

My next step was to add the half-circle I’d cut from my Gelli Plate print.  It was really easy to cut out the printed area, because this stencil’s geometric design is divided equally by its axis. 

On a scrap of the same green mulberry paper, I used a gold-paint pen to write “Christmas Blessings” – I did it on a scrap, not the card itself, because I wanted to make sure it would turn out the way I wanted.  Then I cut out the lettering and glued it to the card cover.  That card is below:

I used part of the leftover print to decorate a matching envelope -- it became a trim that runs along the bottom edge, right under the area where the name and address will be:

Another print I pulled, using the same teal-gesso mix, was on dark blue cardstock that has embedded glitter-like sparkles.  Here, again, is that print:

To make a second Christmas card, I chose a 6"X 6" card blank made from "pearlized" cardstock.  Because of the change in card size, I cut out a bigger part of the print than I had for the earlier card.  I glued the cut-out to my card and trimmed the edges.

I used a rubber stamp and green inkpad to make the greeting on white cardstock.  After cutting out the greeting with Fiskars Paper Edger scissors, I ran the gold pen along its four edges before adding it to the Christmas card.  Here's the card, finished -- except for a red border that I plan to add later:

Here's the matching envelope, again with its decoration along the bottom that leaves room above for the name and address:

For me, it was a natural segue from Christmas cards and envelopes to Christmas giftwrap.  Some of the prints shown at the top of this post were done on foreign newsprint  -- an approach that gives me an interesting background, while resulting in a pliable paper perfect for giftwrap and matching gift-tags.

Here again are those papers:

And here is one of the papers as giftwrap --

And here is the gift-tag, cut from another print, so the prints match but the color backgrounds are in contrasting (complimentary) colors:

Facets stencil, in its entirety, looks like this:

9" x 12" stencil Facets

I'm happy to say that I've designed 70 stencils for StencilGirl.  The multiple pages of my stencils start here.

Thanks for visiting my blog today!