Guest Designing for Ronda Palazzari

Ronda Palazzari is one of my favorite stencil designers, and I'm thrilled to be a guest on her blog today.  Ronda asked that I create some holiday themed projects for the blog.  I own a fair number of her stencils, but nothing that is actually 'holiday', so I challenged myself to think out of the box on this one.  I hope you like what I made!

First up, a card based on a song.  One of my favorite Christmas songs, that just reminds me of being a kid at Christmas, is Silver Bells.  I thought that the Urban Landscape stencil would be perfect for this card, and I wanted to incorporate it in a very subtle and elegant way.  This is such an easy process.  I used a Zig Emboss marker to trace the buildings, added some diagonal lines/shading to the left side of the buildings, and embossed.



You don't have to be an expert, or particularly neat or artistic to do this, and the effect when embossed is gorgeous.

I mounted the vellum panel on an older piece of silver patterned paper, added some gold glitter cardstock accents, embossed the sentiment in gold, and then die cut some silver bells and tied them together with red sparkle trim for a pop of color.

Next I thought I would take on some tags.  I love the look of white on kraft, but I just think that for the holidays things should have a little sparkle/shine.

For these I used one of the feathers from the Mini Fancy Feathers stencil.  I layered it on my tag pieces and colored it in using a Chalk Marker/PITT artist pen.  I actually did one using each of them, and they were so similar that I ended up not being able to tell them apart.



Once this was done, I again used the Emboss marker to add some 'gilding' to the feathers.  I actually did this twice as I didn't get the coverage I wanted the first time, and with the double embossing, you get a thicker, richer look.



And one more shot of the two tags:

Finally, another card.  For this one I thought way out of the box, pulling out my Mini Subway stencil.  All those little compartments remind me a bit of stained glass.  I used embossing paste kind of like you might use heat embossing, for a bit of resist, although I wasn't fussy about it if I accidentally colored on the lines.  You could certainly use the emboss marker for a cleaner look, but I like the extra dimension you get from the paste.



I colored in the sections using Mowed Lawn and Evergreen Bough distress inks with a water brush varying the intensity of color.  I added a light mist of Lindy's Starburst for a little shimmer and snow effect.



Then I mounted the sentiment, cut using my Silhouette and glitter cardstock, and popped the whole panel up from the card.  I added a little sparkle trim to frame the panel.

Hope you enjoyed my projects today and that they inspire you to look at your stencils, even those non-holiday ones, in a different light.  Thanks so much to Ronda for having me today!

Supplies Used
Christmastime in the City Card
Paper/Cardstock:  Avery Elle - White Cardstock; American Crafts - Jolly Days paper; Recollections - Gold Glitter Cardstock and Silver Mirrorboard
Stamps:  Lawn Fawn - Milo's ABCs
Ink:  Versamark; Zig - Emboss Marker
Other:  Crafter's Workshop - Mini Urban Landscape Stencil; Avery Elle - Fill in the Blanks Holiday Dies; CTMH - Gold Embossing Powder and Dimensional Foam Tape; May Arts - Red Sparkle Trim; Tombow - Mono and Mono Multi Adhesive.
Tags
Paper/Cardstock:  PTI - Kraft
Stamps:  Lawn Fawn - Milo's ABCs
Ink:  Versamark; Zig - Emboss Marker
Other:  Crafter's Workshop - Mini Fancy Feathers Stencil; CTMH - Gold and Silver Embossing Powders, Chalk Marker; Faber Castell - PITT White Artist Pen; Twinery - Gold Sparkle and Solid Stone twine; WRMK - Cropodile
Joy Card
Paper/Cardstock:  Crafter's Companion - White Cardstock; Coredinations - Glitter Silk Cardstock; Watercolor paper from Target (Kids Art pad)
Ink:  Distress Inks - Mowed Lawn, Evergreen Bough
Other:  Crafter's Workshop - Mini Subway Stencil; Liquitex - Embossing Paste; Ranger - Water Brush; Lindy's - Starburst Mist; May Arts - Red Sparkle Trim; Silhouette Portrait; Tombow - Power Tabs and Foam Squares