Giving Gifts of Snowflake Stencils CCS458

It's Tuesday and time for a new challenge over at CAS Colours & Sketches. This is the final challenge this month and YoonYoung is ending her hostess duties in style with this great sketch for us: 

Feel free to flip or rotate the sketch when making your card. I combined today's card with my entries for the current challenges over at Addicted to CAS where the codeword is 'snowflake' and the lovely ladies over at The Alphabet Challenge Blog where Melanie has chosen 'W is for Winter'. The recent storms we've had here in the UK with wind, sleet and rain definitely had me thinking about the weather and although we have yet to get a proper snowfall here so far this winter I decided YoonYoung's sketch would be the perfect opportunity to add one to my card - take a look:

Here's the low-down on today's card:

Following on from my experiment of using dies as stencils last week (you can see my first example of this in last week's post here), I decided to have another go at this technique. YoonYoung's sketch made me think of a window and I was inspired by the beautiful stencilled snowflakes on Jaydee's ATCAS card, so I took the snowflake die from the now retired giving Gifts Dies from last season and created a stencil by cutting the twice and then masking a central column using some washi tape to create my four quadrants (you can see my mask on the photo further down this post). 

I then used a combination of Balmy Blue and Pacific Point inks with my blending brushes to add ink to my card, concentrating the darker colour across the diagonal and fading to the outer corners. Similarly inspired by Vicky's beautiful stencilled snowflake creation over at ATCAS where she used a contrasting bright orange for her sentiment, I decided to use bright pink and used a simple sentiment from the retired 'Sparkly Seasons' set for a pop of contrasting colour:

I also added some iridescent rhinestones to the centre of some of the snowflakes for a touch of subtle sparkle - I love the way they take on a slightly pink hue to compliment the sentiment too.

I didn't add a sentiment to the inside of my card as I haven't decided whether to use it as a Christmas card or just send as a festive winter notecard and write a note inside. 

The James Juniors have been wishing for snow since the wintry weather arrived in October; anything for a day off school, or so they thought. Rebecca was most perplexed when we received a letter home from school recently stating that the plan should we be subject to inclement weather from this point onwards would no longer involve a day off; instead all learning would simply move online. Covid clearly has a lot to answer for - it would seem that improved use of technologies is not always welcome, for the pupils at least!! 

Enjoy your day and I'll be back tomorrow with another project. Until then, happy stampin'!

Stampin' Up! Supplies Used:

IRIDESCENT RHINESTONES BASIC JEWELS (£7.00)

BLENDING BRUSHES (£11.25)

MAGENTA MADNESS CLASSIC STAMPIN' PAD (£7.00)

BALMY BLUE CLASSIC STAMPIN' PAD (£7.00)

PACIFIC POINT CLASSIC STAMPIN' PAD (£7.00)

BASIC WHITE A4 THICK CARDSTOCK (£7.75)