Welcome to my crafty blog. I’ve got something a bit different to share today, with this card using the ‘sunburst’ layering stencils from Nellie Snellen. I discovered these through an online class last year with Marion Emberson from Sugar and Spice Crafts. I thought it was the perfect set for two of this week’s challenges: Just Us Girls wants us to use multiple stencils and Less Is More have got pink, grey & gold as their theme colours.

There are three stencils in this set, and there’s a very helpful base plate to use with them, which has peg & holes so you can line up the stencils exactly, together with magnets on the board to hold your card in place. I started with the bottom stencil, which has the largest shapes on it, and sponged ‘shadow grey’ Archival Ink through it.

The next stage was to use the middle stencil, and I pressed a WOW embossing pad through it before lifting it off and heat embossing the card with WOW’s ‘pink fizz’ embossing powder. Now I forgot to take a photo at this stage, so on to the third stage, which used the top stencil (with the smallest pattern). I pressed the WOW pad through it again, and this time used ‘metallic gold’ powder for the embossing.

I cut the card down to the size of the stencil pattern and then mounted it onto a piece of co-ordinating pink card. I finished it by stamping Julie Hickey’s ‘happy birthday’ from her ‘mandala’ set onto white card and embossed it in gold. The whole piece then sat in the centre of an A5 card blank, which gives it a large frame for great impact.

I was so pleased with this effect, and it’s really simple to do. It would work with lots of colour combinations, not necessarily using the embossing powder.