Christmas tree scene with stencils

I secretly have a thing for Christmas trees and stencils.  I had a blast coming up with different ways to use one stencil, I called it my personal design challenge... I really liked the way they turned out!

The stencil is Evergreen Grove from Elizabeth Crafts  I got it from Memory Bounds in Ankeny Iowa and I loved playing with this stencil!

Here are some of the examples...
For the first one, I inked white vellum waited it to dry, dribbled water on it to get a neat look, then let it dry, then I then applied gesso to the stencil, then coated the wet gesso with white glitter to the trees! I added a white glitter  to the dear, and some decorative silver tape at the bottom.

For the second one, I used a "dry brush" with all Kuretake watercolor, (and started adding pigment in) then I let it dry, and added more and less water until I got the look I was looking for, no extra tools, just the stencil brush, water, and two shades of greens! Then once that was dry, I went in with a medium yellow and painted a wash for a background. The trick with this technique is to use just the right water and pigment. I then added some highlights to the branches with some yellow gold from the Starry color collection.  At the bottom I just used a flooding technique to add some texture to the piece. I added two layers of paper for the mat of his painting, and some gold decorative tape from Hobby Lobby to anchor the card a bit more. 

This one I wanted to use a more traditional winter scene, it's going to a college and I didn't want to make it super cute. It was simple, I used green texture embossing paste on the stencil, then once that was dry I painted the clouds. (I finally figured out how to make realistic clouds, so I had to do some on this project!) I then glazed over the whole card with some White gold Starry Color to give it some shimmer.

This one was a fun one, its called a Batik technique, in a really easy way of explaining: It's a two step process, first, you ink the back side of the stencil with ink, (I used watercolor pigment) you will want two diffrent colors so they can blend and mix well.  Lay the stencil inked side down on the paper, and let it dry.... do not do anything to it, I have to walk away for an hour because I want to mess with it or look at the process. 

 Once the ink is dry, you can ink the stencil part with what ever color you think will work well... I chose a lighter ink color to make the trees stand out. This effect is really easy, but takes time, and practice, if you colors don't blend well you get a muddy look, so knowing color theory really helps! 

I used a Lori Whitlock Step card Silhouette File for the card base. 

What do you think? Did you know you could make a bunch of different cards with one stencil? it's fun and I love using one tool for lots of different looks.  stencils let you do that! Which card is your favorite? Do you have a stencil that is your go too? Leave a comment bellow, and Happy Creating!