Creating a Custom Plaid Background with the Peppermint Stick Stencil

Hello, hello everyone - it's Lynnea! I have a cute little Spook Ya Later scene to share with you today - and guess what?! I mixed in a Holiday stencil to make my background! Let's jump right into the video! 

Let's start with that plaid background. I actually used the new Peppermint Stick Stencil! I love when you can take a stencil and use it for a variety of occasions! It's meant to be a Holiday stencil and creates the perfect candy cane striped background, but you can absolutely make it any color you want - even a Halloween plaid! I like to spray the back of my stencils with a temporary adhesive - especially for detailed stencils like the Peppermint Stick Stencil. I don't want those stripes to shift around on me. I positioned the stencil on my card background and blended on In Your Face Orange Hybrid Ink. I wiped off my stencil and flipped it and placed it onto my card so that my diagonal stripes would run the opposite direction and ink blended with Raven Hybrid Ink. Boom! Perfect plaid! Remember that these are hybrid inks, so they may discolor your stencil, but I like to use Extreme Clean Stamp Cleaner and a cloth to remove the majority of the ink off my stencils ( and stamps, too! ).

The Spook Ya Later Stamp Set is too adorable for words! There are little alligators and badgers and all kinds of spooky accessories! I decided to go with the badgers and make a spooky potions scene. I stamped out all of my elements - including a sentiment - with Raven Hybrid Ink and colored them with alcohol markers then cut them out with the coordinating Spook Ya Later Dies. I made a SUPER easy backdrop for them with the Rainy Day Stencil and a bit of masking. I used just the top puffy cloud border portion of the stencil with some Plum Crazy Hybrid Ink and created four layers of clouds on a strip of cardstock then masked off the clouds and blended Raven Hybrid Ink to create the ground. 

I added my blended background strip on top of the Peppermint Stick plaid background and my Spook Ya Later critters and sentiment on top. I thought the potion needed a bit of "spiffying" up, so I stamped the little stars and dots with Raven Hybrid Ink to finish off the card. That's it! I hope this inspires you to look at your stencils and "stretch" them to see what kind of backgrounds you can create!