Hello, friends! As summer is winding down, with its abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables, I thought this would make a fun end-of-summer birthday card!
To create the quilt background for this card, I used a fabulous blank X-Press It Stencil Sheet from Imagination International Inc (aka the Copic distributor for North America and Canada) die cut with a pretty Circles Cutting Plate from Taylored Expressions that (to me) resembles a quilt! (All bold products are linked below in the supply section).
I thought the quilt theme would fit nicely with the cute county fair canning-inspired Blue Ribbon Birthday stamp from Pink Ink Stamps:
You can find these stencil sheets in the X-Press It Online Store at the Copic website. The material is a thick low tack vinyl, which removes from your project/paper easily and without leaving any residue behind. It can be used over and over again ... I store mine in the storage pocket with the die I've used, so it's handy for the next time I may need it!
Here are the steps to create this card:
1. Die cut the Stencil Sheet with the cutting plate die. You'll probably want to use a metal adapter plate in your die cutting machine sandwich, to ensure extra pressure for good clean cuts in the thick vinyl stencil material, especially with a highly-detailed die such as the one I used. It may not appear that the die cut through the stencil material just by looking at the stencil sheet backer paper, but when lifting up the backer sheet, you can see perfect cuts!
TIP: I found the easiest way (after trial and error about 1/3 of the way down!) to remove the negative die cut pieces (lower left in the photo below) from the stencil sheet (lower right) was to turn the backer sheet over to the opposite (less slick) side and place the mask back onto the backer paper. Then I slowly lifted the edge of the stencil and using a stylus (or any semi-sharp tool you have on hand) I held down the negative piece while lifting the stencil. This left the negative pieces stuck to the backer sheet. (The die cutting plate is shown at the top of the photo below):
2. Next, I placed my culled stencil onto a 5.25" x 4" piece of Ranger Specialty Stamping Paper and using a waterbrush filled with Copic Colorless Blender Solution, I picked up R21 Copic Various Ink Refill and "watercolored" the rings:
The coated surface of the Specialty Stamping Paper allows the Copic ink a little time to spread over the surface of the paper before being absorbed into the paper, allowing for watercolor-like results. The Stencil Sheet also provides a nice little "well" for the color to sit in while it dries!
3. Next, I repeated the coloring process by filling in the center diamond shapes with alternating B21 and YR21 Various Ink Refills:
4. Remove the stencil/mask to reveal the lovely Copic watercolored pattern. As with most any kind of wet coloring medium, a little of the ink may seep under the stencil and "out of the lines" but I like that hand-painted look and any small splotches like that don't bother me!
5. Next, I used my favorite X-Press It 1/2-inch Foam Tape on the back of the quilt piece and adhered it to an A2-sized card made from Neenah 110 lb. Solar White cardstock:
6. For the focal image, I stamped the Pink Ink Blue Ribbon Birthday #2243K with Copic-friendly Memento Tuxedo Black ink onto X-Press It Blending Card and colored the image with these Sketch markers (some of the same colors I used for the quilt background):
7. Copic Clear Atyou Spica Glitter Pen was used on the jar lettering. The fishtail flag die cuts were cut from white cardstock and colored with the darkest B29 Copic marker used to color the blue ribbon in the image.
8. To finish the card, a piece of vellum was adhered over the quilt background to mute it a bit, and the colored and die cut image was popped up on more Copic Foam Tape over the background:
Thanks so much for joining me today!
Love the background you created with the stencil! And thanks for the tips on removing the backing paper from the stencil. Will have to try that! :)
Posted by: Michele Boyer | July 27, 2015 at 05:40 AM
What a gorgeous card Sharon! Of course, your Copic coloring is always amazing but that background is just beautiful!
Posted by: Celeste Goff | July 27, 2015 at 06:16 AM