Kindness

Yellow and soft grey for a bright sunny thank you card made with Distress Oxide ink and a 'reverse stencil' technique. The day is bright, the world needs more kindness, and thank you for all that your do.

Supplies

InLinkz.com

Putting It Together

A few weeks ago I was the random draw winner for the Tuesday Throwdown challenge and their sponsor that week was Honey Bee Stamps. So, for my gift from them, I chose the amazing Kindness stamp set and matching die.

Kindness is such an amazing stamp set because it has such a wonderful number of possible combinations. It has big scripty pieces to form Kind, Kindness, and Kindest (these are also the dies in the matching die set) and a bunch of sentiments that go with those words. Honey Bee Stamps has a few other sets like this as well, but this is the set I chose for my prize. I plan to pick up more of their sets in the future. They stamp and cut wonderfully.

Since I wanted to colour the full panel, I used Press and Seal on the bottom of the card to temporarily stick it to my work surface.

The panel is 85lb Elizabeth Craft Designs soft finish cardstock which I absolutely love for blending when I don't plan to use a lot of water. This technique is the maximum amount of water I can use with this card stock. For more water techniques I use watercolour cardstock.

I used the blending tool to cover the panel with Fossilized Amber Distress Oxide.

I then sprayed my stencil with water before laying it down on the coloured panel.

I used a paper towel to blot away excess water.

While the stencil was still in place, I used a Clarity brush to add a little Oxide Spiced Marmalade to the centre of the sunburst. Since the panel as still damp, this blended in for a very subtle touch.

I lifted the stencil carefully to no drag any remaining water. I then fully dried the panel with a heat tool. I then trimmed the panel to the size I wanted for the card front, 5 1/4" x 4" to have a 1/8" visible border of the card base all around as a white matte.

To add a subtle definition to the edge, I used Oxide Spiced Marmalade with a blender to the just the edges.

The finished sunburst panel. Have I mentioned how much I love this stencil technique with the Oxide ink?

I dry fit the stamps on the panel with the cardbase to get an idea of spacing and layout. I have the dies as well as the stamp set but it's easier to use the large word stamps than the dies for layout dry fit.

I die cut 3 of the 'kind' and 'ness' from grey textured cardstock. I had tried die cutting and then stamping them to have the exact same grey as the other part of the sentiment, but it didn't work for me. I liked this better. The other part of the sentiment, from the lovely collection of sentiment parts in the stamp set, I stamped on white with grey and trimmed to a narrow strip. I dry fit my elements together to decide on the best, readable, location for my strip.

I used the same grey ink for the inside sentiment, from a Kraftin' Kimmie stamp set, and stenciled in a sun in the lower corner for a fun detail.

I adhered the background directly to the card base and the strip directly to that. I had backed each layer of the die cuts with adhesive sheet so stacking them and then adding the stack to the card was easy. I thought I was done at this point and even took my "finish" pictures, and then I noticed...

... I had forgotten the tidle, the dot over the "i". I had intended to add one in with an embellishment, a gem or enamel dot, so I hadn't even tried to keep the die cuts. I used a square silver stud turned perpendicular to the "i". I chose the stud over using a rhinestone or gem because I wanted to keep the card gender neutral, suitable for male or female, and didn't want to be too "blingy".

Challenges

Less Is More: Yellow and Grey
Crazy 4 Challenges: Thank you
Tuesday Throwdown: Doodles
Crafty Gals Corner: CAS (Clean and Simple)
Creative Moments: Teacher Appreciation/Anything Goes