Hello again everyone and welcome to today’s second post, this time for our new theme at Addicted to Stamps & More. We’ve cycled back round to diecuts and/or stencils, which gave me the perfect excuse to play with the Butterfly Swirls, another of the new panel stencils that form April’s Product of the Month bundle (double loyalty points on your basket if these are added to it).

I decided to go with ink blending on this one – I find the best way to get a well defined image is to run the stencil through an embossing machine with a rubber shim first. I had the stencil on the top of my card, so the image is debossed into it.

I kept the stencil in place and brushed ‘tumbled glass’ Distress Oxide into the background around the butterflies. I then switched to Spot-on Sponges to colour the butterflies, using ‘picked raspberry’ with a little ‘festive berries’ in the centre. It was a bit tricky to get right into all the small areas around the edges of the butterflies, so I picked up the ink on a blending nib and used that like a colouring pen on the little dots.

Having trimmed the panel down, leaving a narrow white border, I layered it onto a mount of black card and attached it to a 5×7 card blank. I found a suitable sticker in the Birthday & Christmas Collection, mounted it on a narrow layer of white and then black, popped some scrap card under the right hand side to keep it level over the stencilled topper, and added it to the card front. I finished with a few pink enamel dots that I found in my stash.

So, will you go with stencils or die – or both? Come on and join in with the creative fun with us at Addicted to Stamps & More. I took additional inspiration from Jane’s design for AAA Cards for my layout.