 Hi everyone and welcome back, it's Vicky here and today I'm going to play with stencils. I will share 3 holiday cards using stencils on each and every one of them. For my first card I'm going to use the Waffle Flower Mountain Sin stencil, this has just been released, it gives you the bottom line that you can use for your ground, a row of trees as well as mountains and clouds. You can use the stencil all year round, the ground can be used for a hill or for snow like I'm going to do today. So since I'm going for a holiday card I'm going to create a winter scene and I want to use these guys here who are singing the carols so I'm going to measure how long they are going to go on top of my card so that I know where about I need to place the mountains. I am going to secure my stencil with some washi tape and for doing my inking I'm going to work on this silicone mat. All I did was combining a couple of colors of Distress Oxide ink and I like to work on the silicone mat because it grabs the inks and they don't slide around. I didn't film this part because I thought the camera was on but it seems that it wasn't but this is something that I keep on doing again and again on my videos. Now without removing the stencil I'm going to place the other one on top, align the row of trees, decide where I want them to be. I'm going to secure the stencil on top of this card and then go ahead and start inking again. This time I'm going with a shade of green and since I'm going with green over blue this is not going to be a problem. They are not going to blend badly. If you blend green over blue you will end up with green so there is no problem there at all. Just like always you will find everything I'm using linked down below including the exact colors of Distress Oxide ink that I used here. You may also notice that in this video I will switch in between different types of blending tools that depends on the area that I want to cover up and since I have a variety I like to choose the one that is better for the job. Now you can leave the trees as they are or if you want you can add a little bit of shadow. Here I'm using a very thin blending brush and I'm going to add a little bit of brown ink at the very bottom and if you want you can even add embossing paste at the tips of the trees to have snow on them. So I'm going to remove the stencil so you can see what I have up to now. That was super easy to create and I have a lovely scene that truly looks dimensional. If you want you can add some clouds by using some embossing paste. You can even create more layers of snow bunks and trees. I'm going to keep it as it is and I will start working on my focal point. For that I'm using my Misty and I'm going to stamp those guys who are singing the carols. These are from the Falala stamp set by Waffle Flower. It is from a previous release but it is absolutely adorable and I'm going to stamp that with Alkohoor marker friendly black ink and color it in with my Alkohoor markers. Lately I tend to grab my tree blends just because they give me a quick and simple way to color my images and then I'm going to use the matching die to cut it out. And at this point I want to give a shout out to Waffle Flower for their amazing packaging. I like that you can store matching dies and stencils in the packaging when they come as a bundle. So before I go ahead and stick down the guys I decided to add some snow on my scene. I went with stamping some snowflakes and this is just a snowflake from the same stamp set. I'm going to stamp that with Versa marking all over the background and then apply white embossing powder. Now if I went with white gel pen over the stress oxide ink that wouldn't stay as bright as I wanted to. So that's why I opted for embossing which I know that it's going to stay nice, shiny and super bright. Now it's time to put my card together. I have some foam tape at the back and I'm going to stick them all the way at the bottom. I will use my large scissors to cut out everything that sticks out so that I end up having a nice and neat panel. And then I'm going to stick this one on top of a pre-folded card that's four and a quarter by five and a half. Now because I love some sparkle on my holiday cards I'm going to add a dot of glue at the center of each and every one of the snowflakes and then I'm going to stick on top a white gem. The sentiment also comes from the same stamp set. For my next card I'm going to use this stencil which is the pine trees and you can see that again you get a couple of slopes. You can use both of them top and bottom and you will also get three pine trees. For each and every one of them you will get both the negative and the positive. So both stencil and mask. Now for this card I'm working on craft cardstock and this time instead of the stress oxide ink I'm going with archival ink. These inks are permanent and I will let you know the benefits and why I decided to go with them. Now when you are using the stress oxide ink if you want to splash something on top or add embossing paste on top then you will not end up with a super bright look because the paste or the gel it's going to react with the ink underneath which isn't permanent and if you want to add a snow for example it's going to end up slightly dull. That's why I'm going with archival ink here I'm going to blend it nicely and it's going to dry completely permanent so whatever I decide to do on top it's going to be nice and bright. I like to clean up my brushes on a kitchen roll and then with the same brush I'm going to move on to my brown one so that I can add a little bit of shadow at the bottom of my tree. This way it's not going to look super flat and it's going to give some shadows there. One of the benefits of working on this white silicone mat instead of being super easy to clean up is the fact that you can see if you have some ink on your area and you can definitely clean it up quickly since you don't want to bring in any leftover ink on your project. This is quite difficult to do when you are working on the black glass mat because you can't really tell if it is dirty. Now for this card I'm going for a vintage look that's why I'm inking up the edges with the same brown archival ink that I used to add the shadow on my tree so everything matches there and once I'm done with that I want to add some stamping on the edges all around the tree and this is where that mask comes in I'm going to stick it with a little bit of tape on top cover up the tree and now I will go ahead and do some stamping with a text stamp all around this is going to ensure that it's going to add a little bit of visual texture and interest on my background without stamping over my tree which is my focal point and that's the benefit of having a stencil and a mask in one packaging. You can play with so many different techniques and now for a little bit of a life update here in Greece things are getting out of hand again when it comes to the second wave of the pandemic so they just announced that the whole country is getting on a lockdown my daughter who is in high school was already doing online classes but now my son who is in middle class will do online as well so we will have to stay inside everything will be closed for one month and I hope that after one month we will get back to normal now all I did was to stick that panel on top of a pattern paper that I had with stripes and I did of course add some splashes with white paint now I'm going to use one of the banks from the side of the stencil and I'm going to add some pigment ink this is white pigment ink that I'm going to apply just to have a hint of a snow bank now of course you can decorate your tree I decided to go with some gold gems I'm going to add just a few here and there and then you can stamp or die cut a sentiment and stick it on top in my case just because I have so many cheap quotes from last year I'm going to use one of them and I have so many in the packaging that I decided to try and use up as many as I can in my holiday cards this year now for my next card I will showcase a couple of stencils this is the merry bow it gives you the bow as well as merry Christmas your sentiment and you can get this for free check out my blog to find out how and a great way to create holiday cards is if you combine this stencil with a circle stencil to create an ornament or if you combine it with a square stencil to create gifts for this card I'm going to go with the circle so that I can create an ornament this card is going to be super quick and simple just some inking and some paste on top so I'm starting with the lighter color of my distress oxide ink and I'm going to apply it all over my panel making sure that I oversaturate the circle adding too much ink on top is going to help you blend better then I'm going to go over to my next color I started with candy tuple and this is fired brick which is a touch darker and I'm blending that only on one side of the circle this way I'm adding shadow and when you remove the stencil you will see that it looks dimensional now if you want to depend up the shadow even more you can bring in a little bit of brown not too much just a touch on the very edge and this is going to make a huge difference when you remove the stencil you can combine the circle stencil with other stencils that have lovely design so that you end up with an ornament that is decorated however I decided to leave it completely empty I absolutely love the blending on this circle so now for the sentiment and the bow I'm going to use this paste this is from Stamperia and it is a gold paste absolutely stunning I don't know if you can tell from camera how shiny it is it is full of glitter inside nice and thick I'm going to pick up a little bit and apply it over the bow I will scrape off the excess put it back in the jar remove the stencil I will clean it up and then place it underneath so that I can apply the paste again over the sentiment and I don't know about you but there is something satisfying about a blank paste over stencil and then removing it to see the result now always make sure that you put the inside plastic cap on top before you put the lid this way you will ensure that it's not going to dry on you now my panel is ready and I want it to keep this clean and simple that's why I only stuck that on top of a pattern paper that I hide in my stash and all I have to do is to stick this panel on top of a pre-folded card that's four and a quarter by five and a half this is part of a blog hope we celebrate the latest release by waffles flower make sure to visit my blog to get inspired and you will find there all the info that you need to enter the giveaways so these were the projects for today I hope that you had fun that you got inspired don't forget you will find links to everything I used down below the description area thank you all so much for spending some time with me today and until next time stay safe