The theme for Sunday’s Instagram hop was Stencil Fun. For this I made two mini slimline cards. Unlike A2, slimline and mini slimline can vary a bit in size. Mini slimline is generally 3-3.5” wide and 6-6.5” tall. I used Spellbinders dies for my cards and envelopes, so I followed their format of 3.25” by 6.25”. The envelope is about 1/4” larger in width and height.

For the background I used BoBunny scrapbook paper with a Stamperia Traveler stencil and gold stencil paste.

Compartmental making

Compartmental making is a way of making crafting easier and more fun and relaxed. Instead of creating one card or scrapbook layout from start to finish, you break the process apart. This makes it more manageable and less stressful.

A great place to start is with backgrounds. As I’ve said before, I have a box of backgrounds. When I want to create a card, I reach for my backgrounds box. Often I find a background I can use. If I don’t, the act of going through it reminds me of techniques I can use to create a new background that will work for my purposes.

Use it or lose it

Last summer I set myself the goal of using up all the various gold stencil pastes I’d been hoarding. The reason is that stencil pastes have a limited shelf life. They dry out after a few years, even if they’re stored properly. If you want to get your money’s worth out of pastes, you need to use them up. 🤯

I employed compartmental making to reach my goal. One day I went through my stash of scrapbook paper and pulled out a nice pile of papers that would lend themselves to stenciling with gold paste. I cut them all down to 6” by 6”. Then I spent a couple of sunny afternoons just stenciling with gold paste on as many papers as I could. When the paste had dried, I put them all in a box.

At a later date I went through them and pulled out some for use with Lindy’s Magical Powders, spray stain or mica spray. I have a plastic card table in the catio that I use for messy projetcs like spraying. Now I have a photo box full of colorful 6 by 6” pieces of paper. Unlike stencil paste, the stenciled scrapbook papers will last a lifetime or more.

Spellbinders mini slimline dies

Because my background was 6” by 6”, I could either get one A2 card or two mini slimline cards out of it. Fortunately I have a mini slimline layering set that was the Large Die of the Month at Spellbinders a few years ago. This is what I mean when I say that subscribing to Spellbinders clubs is a great way of building up your stash. I use the monthly dies over and over.

The May kits are all about birthday cards and the subscription window opens on May 6th. The May Small Die of the Month is a super cute little airplane that tows a Happy Birthday banner. 😻

The mini slimline die set I have has long since sold out, but Spellbinders have precision layering sets for mini slimline cards. I have the precision layering sets for A2 cards and use them all the time.

Pinkfresh stencilled sentiments

I stenciled the sentiment with the Brushed Sentiments layering stencils from Pinkfresh Studios. My inks were Grassy Knoll for the green and Sparkling Rose for the pink. The gold is Lunar Paste. Once the paste was completely dry, I cut them out.

The stencils give you lots of sentiments at once, so I used Hello on one card and Thank You on another. The reason I used Thank You was that I needed a thank-you card. So that card is already on display on the recipient’s shelf. 😊

I saved the other sentiments for future projects.

Decorating with die cut flowers

I ink blended cardstock with more Grassy Knoll, Sparkling Rose and gold Lunar Paste. Then I die cut foliage from the green, petals from the pink and flower centers from the gold. For this I used a range of Spellbinders floral dies, many of which I got in previous Monthly Die Subscriptions. Here’s a floral die set with a great variety of different flower types to get you started.

If you’re not sure how to place flowers, there are two principles that can guide you. The first one is to place flowers around the focal point of the card. In this case that’s obviously the sentiment. The second one is to place decorations in a diagonal, preferably from the bottom left to the top right. That reads as a positive direction for people who read from left to right.

If you combine the two principles, you cluster decorations around the sentiment and let them trail off into the bottom left and top right corner. Take a closer look at these cards and you can see that I followed the two principles. You can apply the, to whatever decorations you have: flowers, butterflies, enamel dots, stars… anything!

Envelopes

I had more green scrapbook paper from the same pad as the background, so I used that to match the cards. This is single-sided scrapbook paper that’s stark white on the back. The die set I used has a separate die for the front of the envelope. So I used the white side as the front. The flaps I used so they’re green on the outside.

Unfortunately the die set is no longer available. However, you can create pretty much any size envelope with a We-R envelope punch board. I have this one and use it a lot. You can create an envelope out of any paper that’s big enough! This is great if you want an envelope to match your card or you make a lot of cards that are non-standard sizes.

I used the punch board for creating envelopes for an upcoming slimline card. There’ll be a tutorial for it and I’ll go into detail on how to use the punch board then.