Gelli Plate + Stencils = Christmas Cards

I've used my round Gelli Plate for the first time in a long time!

The first thing I noticed – to my delight – was that the round shape of the printing plate greatly changes the “look” usually achieved from using a stencil.  This happy fact stood out for me when I used my 9”X 12” stencil Facets because I’m so conditioned to seeing it in its original 9”X 12” shape.

Here are 5 prints that show the dramatic change into a circular format:

The first print shown above  --

-- was to become the first of two Christmas cards, because this image reminds me of a stained-glass church window.

In making this print, I started with black-and-white patterned scrapbook paper, then layered red, orange and green acrylic paints over it with a brayer. 

Once that dried, I 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 the first 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 another Christmas card, I chose a 6"X6" 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 it out with Fiskars Paper Edger scissors, I ran the gold pen along its four edges and added 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:

The church-window-like Christmas card below was also made with my Facets Stencil but this time I didn't use the Gelli Plate ...  

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  -- this gives me an interesting background and results in a pliable paper perfect for giftwrap and matching gift-tags.

Here again are those papers:

And here they are, used together, as giftwrap --

And finally, with a gift-tag:

In its entirety, Facets stencil looks like this --

To scroll thru the pages of all my StencilGirl stencils, please start here.

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