Making Stencils out of Your Metal Dies by Laura Fulcher

Greetings friends. I don't know about you, but I am always looking for ways to get more use out of my dies. For my card today, I decided to make a stencil out of my Butterfly Frond die.

To start, you are going to need a blank stencil. It is basically a solid piece of plastic that is a good thickness for a stencil. I bought mine from the Crafter's Workshop, but if you Google "blank stencil sheets," you will see that there are a lot of options.

When I cut out my die from the blank stencil sheet, I was left with a circle and a circle stencil with my fronds:

Next, I placed the large circle onto some white cardstock and sponged the open area with blue and green PanPastel chalks (Turquoise and Phthalo Green).

You can see that my chalk is much lighter than the finished project. Well, I wasn't done yet! Next, I left my circle stencil on my cardstock and added my frond stencil to the center of my circle.

Once it was in place, I sponged over the whole thing with Versamark ink and a sponge.

I removed the frond stencil and left the circle stencil. In this picture, you can lightly see the Versamark ink. The fronds don't have any ink because they were covered with the stencil:

Finally, I rubbed over the whole thing with the same exact colors of chalk. Don't worry, rubbing the chalk on top will not smudge your Versamark ink. You can see how the areas that had sponged Versamark ended up much darker and the areas that were covered by the frond stencil only have the first layer of color:

To finish the card, I added the butterfly form the die set, added my sentiment and added a stitched circle around the frond scene for extra embellishment.

I hope you will consider making some stencils out of your dies. There are so many possibilities for using your new stencils.

Have a great weekend!