Hi everyone, Sanna here! When Jaime contacted me and asked if I would like to do a blogpost or two for the TCW blog, I was more than thrilled and immediately agreed. I love the TCW Stencils and have been using them quite intensively recently!! So my first post in May is about cards. I did four cards using the Mini Garden Gate, Quatrefoil, Kaleidoscope, Honeycomb, Tiny Circles and Mini Elevator Gate Stencils. So prepare for quite a long post …

Materials for the first card:

You will need: stencils, white cardstock, a card base, embossing ink pad, clear embossing powder, craft sheet, heat gun, ink pads and a pen.

1. Place a stencil over the white cardstock and press embossing ink over the mask into the paper. While you are at it, cover the whole paper up, so you can use the other images for later projects, if you like.

2. Remove the stencil, cover the embossed areas with clear (or white) embossing ink and heat them with the heat gun until the powder starts to melt (don´t burn your fingers!).

3. This is what everything looks like after you are finished heating the powder.

4. Now add ink over the images with an ink blending tool. I used Distress Inks (bundled sage, wild honey and worn lipstick) from Ranger Inc. You could also use a spray ink here too.

5. After inking, I outlined the stencil images with a black pen for more contrast, but you could also skip this phase, if you prefer the original look.

6. After that just use as much or as little of the embossed and inked paper for a card (or on a layout) and decorate/embellish to finish your project. I used a wide chevron washi tape to create a flower. Just first fold the washi in half and then fold it again lengthwise to create a flower. Fast and easy and adds nice contrast to the card.

Now for the second card. Since I had leftover pieces of that previously embossed paper, I used them for this quick project.

I punched butterflies out of the leftover pieces and layered them over each other and  added a rhinestone on top. Then I used  the “Tiny Circles” stencil, placed it on the card and dabbed some white acrylic paint with a sponge over it. This creates a really nice background for the colorful butterflies – I really like this stencil a lot! Finally just decorated and glued all together. Really fast and easy!

Materials for card number 3:

You will need: craft sheet, Mini Elevator Stencil, card base, embossing ink, embossing powders (white or like me holographic, cream, yellow and orange), heat gun and embellishments of your choice.

First place the stencil over the card and add embossing ink. Then take orange embossing powder and add a wide strip over the card. Dab off the residue, then add in the same manner yellow, cream and the lightest color. Next heat the powder with a heat gun. Now your ombré card base is done. You can create gorgeous backgrounds just by changing the colors and stencil patterns! You could now either outline the images or even add spray ink or stamp ink over the white areas, if you´d like to experiment more, but I wanted to leave the image as it is. Then just add the embellishments and your card is finished!

For the last card you will need:

Card base (I prepared the background with Distress Ink – scrattered straw – and a background stamp), “Honeycomb” stencil, twine, needle and a black pen. And later coloring pens – I used Copics.

 First place the stencil over the card and outline the image with a waterproof black pen. Then grab your coloring pens and color the pattern. After that punch holes around the hexacon images to be able to stitch through the card with twine. Finish the card with a sentiment and embellishments. I used a hot air balloon stamp and a rub-on, then glued everything down with foam pads for a more dimensional effect.

I hope you have enjoyed the tutorials and got inspired by them! Thank you TCW and Jaime for having me here – looking forward to my next post later in May!! See you!

xoxo, Sanna