Hello, my lovely friends! It’s Tania, back with you today! Today, I’m taking the guesswork out of what to do with those darling 6x6 Designer Stencils that coordinate with the Hello Winter Collection and showing you how to use them to dress up some plain kraft gift bags. With something as simple as a painter’s spatula and some acrylic paint you can add an adorable flair to the bags before layering them with the embellishments that coordinate with the collection!
The Designer Stencils are the perfect way to add quite a bit of pattern and visual interest without adding the bulk of patterned paper. Investing in a stencil that can be used over and over and over again in a multitude of ways it a great way to stretch your crafting dollars, especially when you are choosing simple patterns such as this Mini Dot Stencil that I’ve used on this bag. It’s just one of those classic patterns that can be suitable for any project, and any occasion.
When using the Designer Stencils, you can pair them with any type of medium that you’d like but I tend to prefer either acrylic paint or modeling paste. Sponging on inks, or spraying mists and/or spray paints are always a fun alternative, but I’m a girl that loves a bit of texture and dimension to my projects, and the paint and paste lends itself well to those qualities. Hopefully the close-up in this photo helps you to see the dimension that is created when applying paint over the stencil. To do this, I simply placed the stencil onto the surface, swiped paint over the stencil using a spatula, and then lifted the stencil straight up. The stencil then cleans up nicely with some warm soapy water and allowing it to air dry.
If working with stencils is new for you and you’re worried about ‘ruining’ your project, there is plenty of time to practice on just plain white cardstock. The beauty of stencils is that the result is supposed to look somewhat imperfect. So, whenever I first get a new stencil, I take a few sheets of plain white cardstock and do a few ‘practice’ runs with it, just to see how it performs and if there are any learning curves I need to be aware of when working with the stencil. Once those pieces dry, you can cut them down and use them on your projects just like you would a piece of patterned paper. You can see, that’s exactly what I did here with the oatmeal-colored snowflakes stenciled on the white cardstock!
Once your gift bags are decorated, you have the hard part complete! Now it’s time for the EASY part! Time to fill them up and get to the gift-giving portion. If you’re feeling adventurous you can put those stencils on overtime and use them to make a coordinating gift tag or greeting card to go with your gift bags!
Whatever it is you decided to do I hope you enjoy doing it! Happy crafting, friends!
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Supplies:
Element Sticker (Hello Winter Collection)
Alpha Sticker (Hello Winter Collection)
6x12 Chipboard (Hello Winter Collection)
Enamel Dots (Hello Winter Collection)
6x6 Paper Pad (Hello Winter Collection
Mini Dot Stencil (Hello Winter Collection
Snowflakes #2 Stencil (Hello Winter Collection)
Advent Boxes
Baby Wipes
Spatula
Foam Dimensional Adhesive
Tape Runner
Paper Trimmer
