SQUIRRELS GONE NUTZ -- STENCILS AND GENDER NEUTRAL -- SEPT 21, 2021

Hello, my fabulous crafty friends!  It's that time of the month again, where my friends in the Squirrel Squad and I do our little hop where we drag out those squirreled away supplies, and use them in conjunction with a theme or technique. You should have arrived here from the uber creative V at Passions and Distractions.   For this month's hop, we are focused on STENCILS and a GENDER NEUTRAL theme.

I have many stencils that I have not yet used...why, I don't know, because they are so versatile!  I pulled out my Sweater Weather stencil from Simon Hurley Create, and searched out some YouTube videos to refresh my memory on how to use it.  The first one I came across was this one from the fabulous Cassie Trask.  Her video inspired me so much, that I got right to work!  I wanted to do two different color combos, and I figured that while I had all the supplies out, I might as well make 4 backgrounds.

           

            

Firstly, I dry embossed all but one of the backgrounds, the red and green one at the very top.  I used oxide inks for all of my blending; the red and green are Festive Berries and Lucky Clover, and the blues are Salty Ocean and Prize Ribbon.  Oh yes, and I chose not to blend on white cardstock, but rather this very light kraft color.  Once the ink blending was dry, I added Martha Stewart Ice Cube glitter paste to the top panels in each photo.  The bottom panels both received generous splatters with watered down Snow White acrylic paint by DecoArt.  You can click on the pics to see the details better.  I used my Spellbinders Card Creator set B (the largest die) to cut my panels down.  Here are the finished cards:

All the cards were finished off with digital images I already had printed out.  The top 2 cards use a Fred, She Said pre-colored image called Winter Westie -- SO CUTE!!  I love that Tracey provides pre-colored images in a lot of her files!  The 3rd card features an image from the now closed MelJens Designs called Bundled Little Snowgirl.  You know me and snow people! 💖  The final card isn't gender neutral AT ALL, but once I came across this ADORABLE image in my little bin, I knew she would be perfect on the blue glittered background.  The image is from Lily of the Valley (LOTV), and is called Christmas Blessings.    GAH, I just love her! 😍😍😍

OK, so I colored the snowgirl and the angel with alcohol markers.  The little snowgirl got LOTS of sparkle added in the form of glitter gel pens, and Star Dust Stickles.  She also has a few white gel pen highlights here and there.  I used red glitter gel pen on the tiny berries in the sweet angel's head piece, and yellow Stickles on the stars.  Her wings were coated in several layers of clear Wink of Stella.  All of the die cut sentiments come from the Sizzix/Tim Holtz Christmas Phrases die sets, and each word was cut three times from a coordinating colored cardstock, and stacked for dimension.  The panels are adhered flat to the 100lb Recollections kraft card bases, and all images are popped up on 3M foam tape.  The glue I used is Bearly Art Glue.

--CHALLENGES--

ABC Christmas:  S for stencils

12 Months of Christmas Link Up #81:  ATG

Merry Little Christmas #38:  ATG Christmas

Love to Craft #62:  ATG

Mix it Up #53:  ATG

Besties International:  ATG (3/3) 

The Paper Funday #33:  ATG (3/4)

Unicorn Challenge #69:  Add Sparkle

The Creative Crafters #44:  ATG (2/3)

The Corrosive Challenge #9:  ATG (2/4)

Cute Card Thursday #692:  ATG

Creative Craft Cottage #144:  Anything but a square

The Outlawz Festive Fridays:  Christmas

OK, that's it for me in our hop...next up is the TOTALLY AWESOME Karen at Misplaced Mojo.  Please leave us some comment love, and we would love for you to subscribe if you aren't already!  Until next time, my friends...

Stay Healthy, Take Care, and God Bless!

~ Marie