Hello, Altenew friends. Norine back today with three new cards made using the Hill Blossoms Layering Stencil Set released just yesterday! I am falling head over heels for layering stencils lately, with their ease for lining up layers and the opportunity to adjust ink intensity!

I've used the stencil set to create three different cards, with unique styles and designs, apart from just the difference in colors. Let's jump in!

Card #1

For the first card, I started by inking the two layers of the leaves. To achieve that blue/green shade for the leaves, I inked the lighter layer with Frayed Leaf, then Misty Morning inks, and the darker layers with Forest Glade first and then Cloudy Sky over top. Next, I lined up the 2nd stencil and inked the four layers of flowers with Blush, Rouge, Crimson, and Velvet Crisp Dye Inks, each in their turn. The smallest stencil openings are the dark stamen heads in the center of the flowers, and for this, the new Detail Blending Brushes just released by Altenew work perfectly! (Another of those products I love finding out I never knew I needed so much!)

I positioned the stencil to have the flower branch draping down from the top right of the card.

Then, I used my small fine-tipped scissors to fussy cut the top edge of the flower branch as it arches from left to right. I found some striped patterned paper in my stash that matched the inked leaves perfectly and adhered that behind the stenciled design. With both pieces securely adhered to each other, I trimmed the whole panel to be slightly smaller than an A2 card.

Next, I combined two of the birthday stamps from the Birthday Builder Stamp Set to create the greeting and heat embossed with gold embossing powder. To help balance the overall design, I wanted to add something at the bottom of the card, and at first, I was thinking a narrow strip of gold foil cardstock. But I wasn't happy with the difference in shade, and then I remembered the trick of laying down a narrow strip of double sided tape and adding embossing powder to the surface of that!

Card #2

For this card, I did a very simple and straightforward stenciled flower branch using the same colors of ink for the leaves but turning to Vanilla Cream, Hazelnut, Almond Butter, and Milk Chocolate for the blossoms.

But to give a perfectly simple and sweet flower branch an extra bit of zhuzh, I pulled out my fine liner pens and added some squiggle pen lines. You can see that I took no particular pains to stay on the lines or even to exactly duplicate the shape of leaves and petals with the fine liner pen. I simply let the pen work add some “wildness” to the arrangement.

I chose a sentiment from the Fancy Greetings Stamp Set for this card and stamped with clear embossing ink and heat set with Gold embossing powder.

To complete the card, I found two scraps of patterned paper in my stash that coordinated nicely with the stenciled flowers, so I added narrow strips of each to the left-hand side.

Card #3

For my last card, I used the Hill Blossoms Layering Stencil Set a little differently, and ink blended only the cluster of blossoms without any leaves, trying to fill in an A2-sized white cardstock card panel with evenly spaced flowers.

I used all four of the ink shades in the Tranquility color family to layer the blue flowers. Once finished, I selected three of the smallest leaf stamps in the Wildflower Doodles Stamp Set and added leaves to the mini blossoms to fill in the remaining open spaces, stamping with Forest Glades Crisp Dye Ink.

The next step for this card was to ink blend a piece of cardstock slightly larger than the Thinking of You Die, using the same 4 shades of the Tranquility Crisp Dye Ink Mini Cube Set, blending from top to bottom in an ombre fashion. I die cut one shape from the ink blended cardstock and 2 more layers of 110lb cardstock to stack behind and adhere together.

Oddly enough, when I laid the inked, stacked die-cut on the busy background, it felt a little lost. What to do, Stu? Often I will add a strip of vellum to define the greeting on the foreground from the busyness of a background, but I wanted to come up with something different this time. Ultimately, 4 narrow strips of green cardstock, closely matching the color of ink used for the leaves, seemed to be what worked best. It's certainly a feature that draws the eye, possibly even contributes to added busyness, but I feel like it's successful in focusing attention on the greeting, and that was my goal.

So there you go! Those were only three of the many different ways to use your layering stencils, especially a set as sweet and diverse as this one.

SUPPLIES USED

Hill Blossoms Layering Stencil Set (2… [ ALTN ]	Ink Blending Tool – Large [ ALTN ]	Ink Blending Tool – Small [ ALTN ]
Detailed Blending Brushes [ ALTN ]	Birthday Builder Stamp Set [ ALTN ]	Fancy Greetings Stamp Set [ ALTN ]
Wildflower Doodles Stamp Set [ ALTN ]	Thinking of You Die [ ALTN ]	Frayed Leaf Crisp Dye Ink [ ALTN ]
Sea Forest Crisp Dye Ink [ ALTN ]	Blush Crisp Dye Ink [ ALTN ]	Rouge Crisp Dye Ink [ ALTN ]
Crimson Crisp Dye Ink [ ALTN ]	Velvet Crisp Dye Ink [ ALTN ]	Red Sunset Crisp Dye Ink Oval Set [ ALTN ]
Red Sunset Crisp Dye Ink Mini Cube Set [ ALTN ]	Vanilla Cream Crisp Dye Ink [ ALTN ]	Hazelnut Crisp Dye Ink [ ALTN ]
Almond Butter Crisp Dye Ink [ ALTN ]	Milk Chocolate Crisp Dye Ink [ ALTN ]	Delectable Delights Crisp Dye Ink… [ ALTN ]
Delectable Delights Crisp Dye Ink… [ ALTN ]	Misty Morning Crisp Dye Ink [ ALTN ]	Cloudy Sky Crisp Dye Ink [ ALTN ]
Nimbus Crisp Dye Ink [ ALTN ]	Dark Night Crisp Dye Ink [ ALTN ]	Tranquility Crisp Dye Ink Oval Set [ ALTN ]
Tranquility Crisp Dye Ink Mini Cube Set [ ALTN ]	Classic Crest Solar White Cardstock… [ ALTN ]	Fine Liner Pen Set [ ALTN ]