Today is my 7th post for my AECP Level 1 and I’m going to be focusing on stencils in this post.

This class was, again, packed with both new ideas and reminders about older ones so there was LOADS to sink my teeth into!!! I decided to play around with a couple of the techniques to see what the finished result would be.

I started with a watercolour postcard and stuck my stencil down onto it, so that it was in an offset position. (In lieu of Pixie spray, which is very hard to get hold of over here, I’ve started just adding 2-3 strokes of removable adhesive tape runner onto the larger solid portions of the stencil. This helps to keep the stencil in place without risking damaging the paper.) I used a plastic palette knife to spread some golden Nuvo Glacier Paste across the openings on the stencil, once I had a pretty good coverage I used a plastic cake scraper to smooth over the entirety of the stencil and take any excess away. This is the best way to get the best application, and any excess paste you remove with the icing scraper can go straight back into the tub easily, so there’s no wastage!!

(Any remnants left on my palette knife get wiped onto an off cut of paper, then I use it for die cutting!)

I left this to dry, it will probably be dry within a couple of hours but I prefer to leave it overnight, especially when I’m intending to add water over the top.

I added the whole thing onto a Kraft card base and I called that finished!!

Once dried I tapped a little Nuvo Shimmer Powder in Violet Brocade over and spritzer some water onto it. I just kept adding more powder or water, depending on how I felt it was looking and then left it to dry again. I am a touch impatient though, so I did give it a little help to dry with my dual speed heat gun from WOW!

I cut the sentiment out of the scrap paper that I wiped my palette knife over, but when I put this against the card panel they just didn’t pop as much as I wanted. It needed something to help ot stand out a little more, so I backed it with a strip of vellum which really helped.