Concord and 9th and Simon Says Stamp ~ Love Ya

Hey crafty friends, I'm popping in with a make using a gorgeous large floral stencil from Concord and 9th and inks and sentiment from Simon Says Stamp. I love Cathy Zielske's sentiment die sets. They are timeless, elegant and often with a quirky fun twist. I wanted to create something beautiful for my sister-in-laws birthday this year and so I pulled out these elements and got creating. I absolutely love how this turned out and hope you will too.

This is quite a large card, I didn't want to trim any of that gorgeous stencilled pattern away, so I just grabbed a big square card base from my London days. It's far more common to have square cards in England and often quite large ones, up to 8x8! This one is a 7x7 card base and the panel trimmed is approximately 6x6 inches. I think it's showcased perfectly in this larger card design. 

I used Simon Says Stamp inks for the colouring. I used blending brushes and just added the inks through the Concord and 9th Flower Press stencil, adding some light and shade on the bigger blooms. It was so lovely as is, I didn't feel the need to add embellishments or extra trims. This gorgeous stencil is currently on special over at Scrapbook.com, so if you love it too, check out the deal via the thumbnail at the end of this post.

I added a CZ Design diecut sentiment as the focal point. I had some cardstock that was a great match for these desaturated tones, so diecut the top layer of the word die from this. I diecut three more layers from white cardstock and stacked three layers behind the top layer and then adhered them onto the vellum shadow layer. The vellum adds just enough separation from the busy background, to allow the sentiment to stand out. I absolutely love this elegant timeless font style that Cathy favours for her die sets. 

The final touch was to trim the image panel with a die that added a little interest and texture to the panel. I used an older die from my stash which is from the Swedish brand Gummiapan. The die is called Old Paper and I've used the square version. They have rectangles, circles and tags too with this cool design. I popped the finished panel up on foam and mounted it onto the larger square card base. Simple, elegant and perfect for my lovely sister-in-law. I hope you enjoyed this departure from my regularly scheduled posts. It's fun to throw in something a little different every now and then and I've become quite a fan of designs that offer stencils for colouring not just backgrounds, but feature elements. Let me know what you think, are you enjoying colouring with stencils too? Until next time, hugs and happy crafting, Wends xoxo

(I share thumbnails to the elements I design with in order to make your search for them easier, in case you like something I've used. I do use affiliate links where possible, which gives me a tiny commission but costs you no extra whatsoever. It helps the companies I design for to improve their marketing practice and track my contributions. I am deeply grateful if you use them for these reasons. I am proud to design for the companies I do and always feel happy to share where my inspiration and where my crafty stash comes from. I am occasionally gifted products to use, but I only design for companies whose products I absolutely love and buy for myself. My opinions are always my own.)

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