Stencil Play Using Scraps and Distress Resist Spray

This is the last sample that I made for Barbara Gray's show at the NEC, where she introduced the new Town and Hills stencils.  I used the Distress Resist spray for the first time with a piece of copy paper that had been used to clean up my brayer from a previous project (see HERE).  A scrap of gel print from the same project also came in useful to add a sentiment to the card.  I was really happy with how the card turned out, despite being the product of scraps and left overs.

I started by laying the Tower House stencil over the piece of copy paper that I had used to clean acrylic paint off a brayer.  I then sprayed Distress Resist Spray through it.  I left the stencil in place for a short time before removing it and drying the paper.  The spray gives a slightly raised, shiny finish.

Once the sheet was completely dry, I blended Black Soot Distress Oxide over the top of the image and used a piece of dry paper towel to buff the Oxide off the resist areas.  There were a couple of areas where the resist spray had not entirely taken, but I later used a black Posca pen to fill in the gaps.

I cleaned and dried the stencil, masked off the tall building on the right and laid the stencil back over the image.  I then used the harlequin and script stencils from the Journaling stamp set to add interest in Mermaid Lagoon Distress Archival ink.

Next I trimmed back the image and added highlights to the background with a white Posca pen.  Notice that I also used a black pen at this point to 'mend' any gaps.

Taking a gel print strip of card in the same colours as the background, I added Celebrate Your Special Birthday (Mini Word Chains 3&4) in black ink.

This was matted onto black card leaving a narrow border at the top and bottom.  To finish,  I added the stencilled piece to an A5 white card blank, laid the sentiment strip over the top and trimmed it at either side.

I love the mixture of textures and colours in the backgrounds of both the main image and the sentiment strip!