Paper craft project no. 478: Grateful and blessed

It's day 2 of the ARTplorations stencil blog hop! For one week, you get to be inspired and see projects featuring stencils (and stamps too!) - the hop start here. There are plenty of prizes up for grabs for those who hop along as well as share their stencil projects in the flash stencil project linky party -- which starts today!

While my MIL babysat my little girl for an hour yesterday morning, I was able to create two cards. I needed to be quick so out came my gel printing plate again. I started by braying permanent red and gold acrylic paints on the 5x7 gel plate. I placed Peony No. 2 stencil on the plate and pulled 2 prints directly on my card bases. I love the distressed look of the second print (card on the left). I added faux texture by inking some grungy images from Scribbly Splattery Grunge with a red Tombow marker and then stamping. I added some splatters with red and black Inktense blocks, as well as doodled the black and red borders before finishing the cards by stamping sentiments from Grateful Beyond Words.

Hope you got inspired by my cards and that you can link up your projects! As long as you used a stencil (any brand) and you created them from November 20 onwards, you're all set! The linky is open until Friday, December 23. You'll find the linky + day 2 projects by the STAMPlorations girls here.

Thanks for stopping by! Don't forget to smile :o)