A Collaboration With Stencils

Today I am joining up with the wonderful Cat Craig from Cat luvs paper to share two cards made with two different stencils from Uniko. If you like CAS cards you will love the stamps designed by Bev at Uniko. She has a unique and wonderful CAS style. Having said that, my cards today aren't very CAS and I actually have four, rather than two,  to share. I can't wait to see what Cat has done with her stencils.

These are the 2 stencils we were tasked to use;

Natures treasures Stencil and Mask

Fun Flowers Spray Mask - OK strictly speaking this one is a mask

My first card uses the natures treasures stencil. I started by inking some glossy paper with different shades of green ink. When it was dry I used the stencil and some transparent glossy texture paste to cover the background with leaves. I had to do this one leaf at a time and let it dry before moving on to the next one. Once it was all dry I blended an olive green ink over the card front with a blending brush. The texture paste resisted the ink to make the leaves stand out. As the background is the star of the show I wanted to keep my focal point relatively simple. I stamped the matching stamp onto glossy paper, waited for it to dry and then blended some other green ink over the white paper to tone it down a bit, as the white was just too stark. I found the flower behind the leaf in my box of bits that I had stamped and fussy cut a long, long time ago. It is a stamp by Lavinia Stamps and I decided it would fit quite nicely on this card, just tucked behind the leave to add a little more interest.

The sentiment was foiled on a piece of scrap gold card and the panel was die cut, mounted onto some mat gold card before mounting onto a cream cardbase. I finished it off with 3 little gems.

My second card started in the same way, but this time I just blended some ink over the mask. The diecut flowers and leaves were also in my box of bits. I was pleased to use these as I had spent some time inlaying them. I finished this card off in the same way as card 1.

Card number 3 had a similar background but it started out much darker and became darker still after I had inked over the mask. I added the bright yellow lotus flower and foiled sentiment. I thought it had the feel of a pond with a waterlily. 

My final card started with one of my gelli plate backgrounds. I simply inked over the mask and added a foiled sentiment and mounted it on black to give a bit of contrast.

I am not really sure how or why I ended up with 3 cards using the fun flowers mask, I just kept experimenting and managed to get them all completed. These sorts of experiments often end in abandonment, but not this time, so that was a result.

As you can tell, I am very much into backgrounds at the moment, but I haven't made much of a dent in the pile of acrylic paint gel prints yet.

Thanks Cat for your wonderful crafty friendship. I am glad we managed to do a second collaboration this year. You can see what we did last year here and here. All I can say is doesn't time fly?

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