March of the Christmas Cards

Today I'm trotting out a from a past Christmas, and inviting you to click on the first two photos below, to better see details on these six greeting cards:

Altho the above cards celebrate Christmas, the same idea can easily adapt to birthday card decorations.

First, I got out some papers and blank greeting cards...

... starting with the above scrap of leftover metallic paper, previously stamped with alcohol inks.

Next, I placed stencils over the papers and masking taped them down:

Then I used a sponge with heavy body acrylic paint to start pouncing on the color:

Clicking on the above image to enlarge it, you can see that I've masked off the right half of this vertical "swish-and-swirl" pattern.  Here I am printing directly onto a greeting card cover.  I moved the stencil progressively to the left, applying paint each time, to end up with 3 candles in a horizontal row across the card face.  The final card is shown at the start of this post -- it's the middle card in the second-from-the-top photo.

On the upper right in this above photo, you can see where I used a piece of newspaper to pounce excess paint off the applicator before bringing the applicator to the stencil.  This helps prevent  paint from running under the stencil, which causes problems if you want crisp details in your final prints.  This off-loading technique is a huge challenge for me, but I do the best I can.

 Next, I carefully peeled off the stencils, to reveal the prints:

Then I cut apart the "candles" -- easy to do, since these stencils provide their own built-in guidelines.

The final products are at the top of this post:  The candles have been either collaged, or printed directly, onto greeting card covers, along with collaged-on flames.

The stencils I used were my 9"X12" Wrought Iron Gate --

-- and my 9"X12" stencil Borders 1 --

and my 9" x 12" Borders 2  --

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