Postage Collage Bundle + Layered Christmas Stencils

After I finished this card, I declared it as “my favorite card I’ve ever made!” But, I know I’ve declared this before and I’ll likely do it again. So, we’ll just call it my favorite card out of the cards I’ve made recently. And really, it is. After trying a variety of cardstocks and techniques (I had every metallic gold medium I own on my desk!), I decided I loved how the metallic gold paste and white heat embossing details looked against the ivory cardstock. I also loved how the ink took on a soft, muted look with this cardstock, giving it a more vintage look. I mentioned in my previous post that one of the best things about this bundle is the creativity that it evokes, but it’s also so versatile. For this project, I kept the postage frame together as one piece instead of snipping them apart for individual stamps. And, I added just a few postage rate stamp details along with a beautiful scripty sentiment to complete my design. I hope you like this card as much as I do, and thanks for stopping by!

STEPS

1.)The first step was to die-cut the postage frame from Lawn Fawn’s Vanilla Malt cardstock. Then, before stenciling anything with ink, I needed to heat emboss the details that I wanted to be white. There are four layered stencils that are numbered for the recommended sequence of application, but because I wanted to do the heat embossing before any ink, I used whichever stencils coordinated with these areas first. I found the best way to achieve crisp, clean lines around the stencil with the clear embossing ink was to use a little finger sponge dauber. Then, using white embossing powder, I heat set the falling snow around the pine trees, the design details on the deer, the snowflake detail on the quilt block, and finally the roof of the little house.

2.) Next, using the layered stencils in the recommended sequence, I inked the remaining areas except for anywhere that I was planning on applying gold paste.

3.) For the metallic gold areas, I mixed Hero Arts Gold Paste with a tiny bit of gold Perfect Pearls so the paste had a little more metallic glimmer. Then, using a palette knife, I applied the paste to the areas I wanted gold, allowing the paste time to dry after each stencil. I cleaned my stencils with mild soap immediately after using the paste. Like any paste, it can be difficult to remove if it’s allowed to dry. The gold paste set well on the paper and didn’t absorb any of the inked color it may have overlapped with, which can happen sometimes. I think the addition of Perfect Pearls to the paste really helped with this. The metallic accents are so beautiful in real life and really set this card design apart. It’s worth all the extra process time, because not only does it add a touch of sparkle, but it adds just a bit of dimension, as the paste sits above the paper.

4.) Using the Postage Collage Stamp set, I stamped a few of the postage rates on my stenciled images, creating what looks to be the cutest sheet of Christmas stamps. Then, on a Vanilla Malt A2 card base, I stenciled a red and blue Air Mail border using the Waffle Flower Postage Collage Coloring Stencil. I attached my sheet of Christmas stamps to this card base before attaching my sentiments. The sentiments, from a Limited Edition, Honeybee Stamps and Simon Says Stamp collaboration, are stamped on the same Vanilla Malt cardstock and then die cut. As usual, I die cut the sentiment and sentiment strip twice to provide a little extra strength and stability to the pieces. Using foam squares, I popped up both sentiments. Lastly, I attached the whole thing to a side-fold A2 card base.