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