I love paper crafts. I don’t do a lot of them myself, but today I needed a card for someone special, and decided to see if I could come up with something creative.
First I cut cardstock to size using my rotary cutter. I bought this cutter, along with a self-healing mat and quilting ruler years ago during a brief quilting phase. I’ve only made one quilt, but I have found many other uses for these three tools!
One of my scrap pieces was just the right size for a bookmark, which I thought would make a nice add-on for this project. I rounded the corners of the bookmark with a corner rounder that I had purchased several years ago at a scrapbooking party, then punched a hole for a decorative cord. I never did get the knack of scrapbooking, but I love this tool, and it’s been used for many crafts and school projects.
Once I had everything cut and trimmed, I stenciled using a very pale green acrylic paint. Offloading is always an important step when stenciling, but I found that it’s even more important when stenciling on paper. Fortunately I practiced on one of my scrap pieces first! I wanted a soft faded look, so I offloaded almost all of my paint before going to the paper, and stenciled using a swirl technique.
I’m happy with the way the card turned out, and think I may try this again in the future. How about you? Have you ever stenciled on paper? What did you make and what materials did you use?
Editor’s Note: The stencil used for this project is Gothic by Classic Stencils, designed by Margaret Riley. I got it at a trade show (yes, years ago — this post is really showing my age, isn’t it?). To my knowledge, they were never available online, but if I do find a source, I’ll update this post and let you know.
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