Mondrianesque

Happy New Year
I am excited and nervous in equal measure today, as it is my first ever post as a member of a design team. I was very very honoured to be invited to join the CAS Stencil Design team by the wonderful Loll who makes the most gorgeous CAS cards. Despite being quite daunted by the prospect, there is no way I could refuse.

Today the CAS Stencil Challenge blog is celebrating it's first birthday so there will be a prize:

The winner will receive a

$25 GC to Simon Says Stamp 

and there will also be a random draw for another
$25 GC to Simon Says Stamp

The prompt this month is:

Our Host is Nancy

Our guest designer is Arlene

In theory this should not be hard for me as I have been very busy buying new stencils (I think I have a good excuse now), but in reality this card took a long time to come right. I do hope it will gets easier as the months go by.

I have called this post Mondrianesque as my card is inspired by the famous geometric designs of the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian. Even if you haven't heard his name you will recognise his work which has a fresh modern feel even though he died in 1944 at the age of 71. 

Do you remember the Mondrian dress from the 1960's? I don 't directly remember it from the 60's as I was still a child, but the design has become iconic since then. Coincidentally I saw the front cover of this weeks Radio Times has a picture of the cast of Call The Midwife wearing one and there is an exhibition featuring it at the Yves Saint Laurent Museum in Paris at the moment.

Here is my card:

I very nearly gave up with this as it proved more tricky than I thought it would. The stencil is called gridlock by Sharon Callis, I thought it would be perfect for this design, but it proved to be hard to keep the card clean and yet saturate the spaces with bold colour. In the end I stuck the card down well and masked round the space I wanted to add colour to. I then wiped the ink directly onto the card, filling in the edges with a small blending brush. Once that was done I had to create the black lines - first I traced the edges of the stencil with a fineliner pen, then I removed the stencil and used thin post it tape to mask the white areas. I then filled in the lines with a jet black alcohol marker but unfortunately the ink bled a little, so I went round it again with a ruler and a fineliner to tidy the edges up. This still isn't perfect but good enough.

I cut the panel with a stitched rectangle die, mounted it on some craft foam and added it to the card front. As we are celebrating the challenge birthday I added a birthday sentiment. I also thought the design would be good for a male card.

Here is a picture of the Mondrian dress to remind you:

What do you think? I do hope you like it and it inspires you to take part in our challenge this month.

Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog today, I really appreciate it.
Hilary
xx