Extend the way you use your background dies!

I’m going to use the A2 crafty plaid background die as a stencil. First I’m cutting it out of a piece of sturdy cardstock, I am using 250gsm cardstock. When cut I’m placing it on a piece of white strathmore mixed media paper with vellum surface, using washi tape. On the picture below you can see how I taped it down. Now it’s time to add paste, I’m using crackle paste for this card and add it with a pretty big pallet knife onto the stencil. When all the holes are filled I carefully take off the stencil. The paste has to dry for a pretty long time so I did this at night so it would be dry the next morning. 

When it’s completely dry you’ll see the paper isn’t flat anymore. You can bend it a little to make it flat again. I’m going to use spray paints to colour the background so I’m placing the paper in my spraypaint box. I’m using a box to prevent the ink from spraying around on my desk. I think orange, blue and green go well together so I’m choosing these three colours for the background. First I spray water onto the paper and go in with one colour. Spraying every colour random onto the paper. I’m adding water if necessary and add more sprays of colours if I think it’s needed. It’s always to fun play around with spray paints and see what’s the outcome. When I think it looks good I’m drying the paper with my heatgun on the lowest setting. 

To add some more interest I’m going to add metallic accents using distress spritz in peacock feathers and spiced marmalade. I’m not spraying these onto the paper but take out the sprayer and tap onto it with my fingers to release drops of it. 

I want to have white edges around the background so I cut it a little smaller than my card base is. I’m adding distressed edges with a paper distresser tool to my background to add more detail to this card. I’m placing double sided foam tape on the back of my background and place it onto the white card base. 

This background doesn’t need much so I’m adding the meraki moments hugs die using three different papers. The base is cut out of vellum, the middle part out of black cardstock and the top part out of white cardstock. Glueing these layers together with tacky glue and adding it onto the card base with 1mm double sided foamtape. 

I’m going to add a little extra using some black eclipse matte opal embellishments and the card is good to be send out!