Layering Stencils with Gracious Florals
by Janet Katz

 

The Gracious Floral release from Memory Box has so much to it. I’m very new to layered stencils, so when I got my hands on these, I almost didn’t know where to start. I decided to use the stencils without the coordinating stamp and it’s an interesting look.

 

The stencil pack has 5 pages to it. There is an outline stencil that allows you to color a background around the outline of the entire flower. I didn’t use that this time. Each 6 x 6″ stencil page has several layers of the flowers and leaves on it, carefully marked with letters and numbers such as A1 – A4, using letters A-E. This allows you to not only know what goes with what, but in what order to use the stencils. That is handy. I used several colors of plum dye ink for the flower, along with a brown for the center. The leaves were made from two different greens. After doing all the stencil work, I used the matching die to cut the entire stenciled image out. 

 

 

Then I used the die again to cut out the same shape from a medium plum cardstock and a green cardstock. I trimmed these and put them behind my stenciled die cut image as a sort of shadow.

 

Next, I used many of the stamps that came with the Gracious Floral stamp set to stamp a dark gray text background. I simply arranged all the stamps in a tight pattern on my stamp platform and tried that – check out the photo.

 

 

(I initially tried it with an additional spritz of water, but I did not like that result.) After I made this text background, I trimmed it and matted it onto the plum cardstock and then put it on the top 2/3 of a gray cardbase. I stamped the “sending smiles” sentiment in black ink under this.

 

Before I glued down the stenciled image with its solid-colored cardstock shadows, I took a piece of very fine metallic twine and curled it up into a “nest” and glued it on top of the stamped background to add texture. My last embellishment was to add clear Fairy Jewels in a random pattern on the card to give it some sparkle.

 

 

I hope you like this interpretation of the stenciled floral image. Have you tried layered stencils? What did you think of them?