Guest Designer - AAA Card Challenge # 44

I've been looking forward to this day for weeks! After winning a challenge at AAA Cards a few months ago, Victoria invited me to be a Guest Designer. Of course I jumped at the chance and have been waiting for this day to arrive!!

This is one of my favourite challenges to join as they always have the most interesting inspiration ideas each fortnight and they look for cards with a 'clean and simple' design, which you know I love. The theme for this challenge is:

                                        USE A STENCIL AND/OR PASTE

I don't own any embossing paste (really must get some, looks like so much fun...) but do have a handful of stencil's that I hardly ever use. So this was a great chance to dust them off and try them out. 

My card is INCREDIBLY simple but I found the stenciling quite fiddly (I had problems with their 'crotch' area') but more on this in a moment. Really hope you like the idea:
 

 
I have a set of stencils from Teresa Collins 'Basically Essentials' and found this lovely couple among them. I thought it would be great to use them for a 'love' themed card. I laid them on the card front and masked all around (as I get very messy with my blending tool). I used Picked Raspberry and my mini blender and started at their feet. 

I very quickly realised that the thin piece of plastic between their legs kept wobbling around but I had no way of keeping it in place with tape. I didn't want either of them to end up with an extra wide 'private' area so had to think quickly. I ended up by holding the end of down with my finger, blending on one side and then swapping fingers. I must admit I had a bit of a giggle to myself but then realised I'm 41yrs old (not 5yrs) so regained my composure.

I tried to blend so that it was darker on their hands, feet, heads and under-arms, seemed to look better than keeping them all one shade. After removing the stencil, I stamped and heat embossed the sentiment (from Paper Smooches 'Uplifters') in gold and put a hole-punched heart (from glitter CS) on some foam tape. So, very simple and their dignity was kept intact!

I'm going to link this to the Simon Says Stamp - Wednesday Challenge where their theme is 'Use your favourite technique and/or product'. I love heat embossing, could do it all day and still find it magical!

You have two weeks to join the AAA Card Challenge and I'm so looking forward to seeing your cards in the Gallery. The Design Team have some incredible cards on the blog to help with ideas too. I need all the help I can get with using Stencils, so can't wait to be inspired. See you there and thank you to Victoria and the DT for having me!!

Take care
Shona