Spiral Thanks

I created this card inspired by the sketch and photo for the Fusion "Winter" challenge. The dark greens & whites in the trees directed my overall color scheme.

I cut a panel of white cardstock to 5.5x4.25". I must admit, it was a bit of a struggle to position Altenew's "Illusion Spiral" stencil. I wanted it to look kind of like stylized sun rays, with the center of the spiral being the "sun." But I quickly discovered that the way the "rays" are cut in the stencil, they don't go out evenly from the center area, & have odd angles. So I ended up positioning it higher on the panel than I had originally intended, & covered the bottom with my greeting strip. That gave me the look I was after!

I inked through the stencil first with Evergreen Bough Distress ink, using a small makeup brush to blend the color softly & fade out towards white at the edges. Once I had the color blended smoothly, I used a smaller makeup brush & Pine Needles Distress ink to deepen the color just towards the center of the design.

I die cut the greeting with a "Many Thanks" die by My Favorite Things (discontinued). I felt the pale blue cardstock was a bit too flat-looking, next to the ombre of the stenciling. So I used a foam ink blending tool with Tumbled Glass Distress ink to blend up from the bottom of the die cut word. After that, I went in with Peacock Feathers Distress ink to darken the color a bit at the bottom of the letters. I glued that to a strip of dark teal cardstock, adhered that to my panel, & mounted the finished panel to a white card base. Overall, this was a pretty easy card to make. The design and stencil position were the only really hard parts. :)

I'm also entering this card in the following challenges:

613 Avenue Create's Challenge #229: "Anything Goes" (not playing the twist)
Die Cut Divas: "New Things" (the "Illusion Spiral" stencil is new for me)