There’s nothing I love more than a good clean and simple, geometric card with a fun color palette, and that’s exactly what I set out to make when creating today’s project.
Last week, the latest Essentials by Ellen release went live in the Ellen Hutson shop, and it included new Essential Circles and Arches hot foil stamps. These coordinate perfectly with the tried-and-true Essential Circles and Arches nested dies, and they’re extremely versatile. While you can use them to create frames and shaker windows of all sorts (which is where my mind went first), they can also be used for….. DIY print and pattern making! And that brings me to today’s card…
I had a vision for some birthday balloons, and wanted a very clean, simple design that incorporated the hot foil. (Let’s be honest, do I make many cards these days without hot foil? Nope!) I decided to try my own balloon-like look with the Essential Circles dies and some acetate, running them through my die cutting machine to make my own reusable circle stencils of various sizes. This is a great way to get more out of your shape dies – or any die, for that matter. If it creates a shape you’d want to stencil, grab some acetate or repurpose some plastic packaging and make your own!
Tip: In my experience, my Anna Griffin Empress isn’t great at cutting acetate, but I always get great, clean results (even without a shim) when I use my Big Shot. If you’re not getting a clean cut, you can always try adding more pressure with a metal or cardstock shim, or even use regular typing paper as your stencil material – it’s just not transparent.
For my color palette, I chose a combination of some boho-inspired neutrals, pinks and oranges:
With my stencils created and my inks chosen, hot foiling was next. I wanted to do this in matte gold foil on white cardstock before any ink was applied, juuuuust in case any over foiling happened. (I didn’t want to have to start over!) Luckily though, these hot foil circles are a breeze to work with and the impressions were perfect. I used several of the small ones, scattering them around a white card panel so that they looked like they were cascading down and to the left.
From here, I used my DIY circle stencils to ink blend in the 6 colors above, again, cascading downwards in an overlapping fashion. For the sentiment, I picked a Happy Birthday from the Spellbinders Birthday Unboxing Glimmer hot foil plate set, again using matte gold foil on Concord & 9th Sorbet cardstock. To finish off the card, I mounted it to a white A2 card base and tied a bow with gold cord along the fold.
I hope this card has inspired you to think about using basic shapes creatively on your cards – they may be basic, but these are called Essentials for good reason! Finally, if you haven’t yet, be sure to check out the new Essentials by Ellen release. There are so many fun new products, and plenty of inspiration to be had over on Instagram from members of the Brand Ambassador team. I’ll see you back here soon!
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