Basic Grey - Sticker love

I don't know about you but I used to dislike stickers a lot, probably because I was never sure on how to use them. Once they were stuck down - that was it...trying to peel them off used to result in the top layer of the paper or card stock being lifted in the process.

But over the last year or two, I have embraced stickers as the fantastic embellishment and tool they are and by now I can't get enough of them.

When I received a box of Basic Grey goodies, this sheet of stickers screamed out to me to be used as the focal point for a project: no patterned papers, just cardstock, ink and stickers.

When I mentioned that I use stickers as tools, I wasn't kidding: they are perfect for stencilling and they are still

 sticky afterwards. For my stencil-project I chose that large blue branch of leaves and placed it sticky side up on a piece of cardstock.

(for all pictures: click onto them to enlarge their view, if you wish)

I used some Cosmic Shimmer in Aqua Lagoon to spray generously over the background

Then I flipped the sticker over and placed it back onto the cardstock.

note: the residue of the ink will transfer to the cardstock, as if the image was stamped. If you do not wish for this effect, just wipe the residue off.

Now I sprayed some Cosmic Shimmer in Golden Mint over the cardstock to lift the outline of the second stencil from the background.

To add a few colour accents I unscrewed my bottle of Cosmic Shimmer in Candy Pink and just dropped some blobs of ink randomly onto the background.

Next, I chose which stickers I would like to use for embellishments and I decided to go with a floral theme and make good use of all the different sized flowers. As I like to layer stickers, I tend to first stick them onto a plain sheet of cardstock and cut them out individually. Once that is done, I take either an ink pad or black pen to run along the edges, to make the shape stand out a bit more.

Finally, with the help of some adhesive foam pads I layer the stickers on top of one another to create my embellishment.

As a final step, I used a black Zig Millenium pen to doodle outlines onto my stenciled images and outline a few more of the stickers as well as some of the ink splashes.

In addition to the stickers I used some colour-coordinated tags, which I hand-cut from various sheets of Bazzill cardstock, as matting for the photograph. To finish the layout off, I ran a Cats Eye Chalk Ink pad in French Blue along the edges of the cardstock.

And here is the final result - not one piece of patterned paper in sight, only cardstock and stickers.

Products used:

Cardstock - Bazzill

Stickers - Basic Grey, Jenni Bowlin, Dymo

Ink - Cosmic Shimmer, Clearsnap Inc

Pen - Zig Millenium

Pearls - Mark Richards