Creating My Own Stencil!

Hello everyone, welcome back to another post. 

Today I'm showing you two cards I've created by making my own stencil! It's not an officially produced one but it worked for a while nonetheless! Read on to find out how I did this, and what products I used.

Sometimes I'm really looking for a certain type of product but I don't have anything suitable in my purchased products, and there's not too much available on the market, or it'll take at least a month to get to me. This is the story of how I decided to create 'my own' stencil using products from my stash!

I was looking through my card and die collection, seeking some inspiration. I had pulled out the Concord and 9th Grateful for You stamp and die set and was wondering if I should put the time into colouring the set again, when I noticed the small die that comes with the set. It's a small cut-out crosses die (see it in the image below), suitable for small additions or even creating some confetti.

I decided to grab a thin piece of scrap paper and die-cut this out numerous times. I laid the die quite close to each cut section and slowly my handmade stencil grew. 

Once the stencil was created I had to play around and see if it had been worth taking the time to create!

I decided to blend some Distress Ink through the stencil, and I used a new combination of Candied Apple, Ripe Persimmon, Spiced Marmalade and Mustard Seed. 

Before stopping to create a card withe the background, I decided to create another background, using the same colours again. At this stage I wasn't sure what I was going to do with the backgrounds but I was having fun!
This time I blended the crosses through the stencil, then took the stencil away and also blended the colours onto the cardstock, taking away the white spaces. I then put the stencil back on and just sharpened up the crosses again to make this background a solid colour one.

Once I was happy with these backgrounds, I took a stamp from Pink Fresh Studio's Bloom and Grow set and inked it up with the Candied Apple, and stamped it onto two die-cut circles for the cards. Then I added some string around the stencil, and placed it all onto a cardbase!

I'm fairly pleased with how these cards turned out and that a different idea worked out well. I can probably use the stencil maybe one or two more times before the paper wears too thin and it'll break, but it's definitely something I can do again in the future!

So that's it for today! Thanks for reading and let me know if you are able to make your own products out of older items in your stash like I did. Any more ideas you can share I'd love to hear!

Until next time,

Shana xx