Birthday Stenciling

Hello! I had lots of fun creating this beautiful shiny birthday card today! Jessica here and I’d love to share how I made this project with you using some of my favorite cardstock.

I started out with a piece of the Neenah Cotton Letterpress Flourescent White cardstock – this isn’t just for letterpress! I love ink blending on this cotton cardstock. It gives a nice soft effect and blends beautifully. Once I decided on a floral birthday card, I went through my stash looking for a layering stencil to use.

I use a grip mat to hold my paper and stencil in place.

I started out with a couple different greens to stencil in the leaves and stems.

After stenciling the stems and leaves, I picked out some purple (surprise!) for the flowers. I started using a lighter purple with a light hand on the flowers.

After the flowers, I went in with a darker purple and a smaller blending brush to add some shading and dimension. I think that is a great way to step up your ink blending!

For the last stencil with veins in the leaves and highlights in the flowers, I wanted to give it some extra pop! I used some gold paste on this layer and I love how it turned out!

We are not done adding extra interest, though! Although not much of the base layer will show through, I added some texture for a little extra something. I used the same letterpress cardstock in an embossing folder. Cotton letterpress paper is great for getting a really nice deep impression with embossing folders.

I’m not sure if you know this or not, but I LOVE the Stardream Metallic cardstock line! I love every color and use it in almost every card I make! Today, I used the Stardream Metallic Fairway for one of the layers in my card. I also wanted to use this cardstock for my sentiments. Do you ever get sad covering up so much of a metallic or shimmery card panel? I do! To help alleviate this sadness, I cut out the center of this panel using a craft knife. This is the piece that I will use for my sentiments! And no one (well, except all of you) will even know that the center had been cut out!

Once I cut out the piece, I put it in my MISTI, embossed my sentiments in gold, and die cut them.

I also cut a thin mat from Gold Foil cardstock to help bring out the gold accents. And this is how it looks all put together! I added a few gold pearls and that finished up my project!

I’d love to see how you use the letterpress cardstock – tag me @purple_puppy_papercrafting on IG.