Cake, because you don’t need a reason

I’ve been creating border stencils recently and I liked to add an image to them, some shape besides borders, but something that kinda fits with the theme. I’ve had sawtooth borders with a halloween cat, checkerboard borders with a snowflake and as I was drawing a scalloped border, it was kinda giving me cake vibes, I don’t know why, but here we are. The Scallop border and cake stencil set is here if you would like to see it.

Been thinking a lot about stencils recently since I started designing them and wondering why I never really ‘got’ them before now. One of the things that might be ‘it’ was lack of detail. I’m a huge details person. The nitty gritty, the millimeter-to-the-left, the line-width, the smoothness-of-the-curve, it’s where I feel most comfortable.

One reason I may have pooh-poohed stencils slightly because there is generally not a huge amount of minute detail, but the thing that is kind of converting me is colour. Colour and soft brushes. What a combination for fun. Look at this cake, with that honey glaze dripping over the edge, look at the lightness and darkness, the transparent sort of overlay that you can get with stencils, it’s a really tidy, but textural finish, and it’s one that I have not been able to get outside of watercolouring.

Unlike watercolouring though, I can get that effect but also have smooth clean lines – my most favourite thing! I love it, I love how colour looks brushed on to open spaces with a soft brush. I love the overlay of semi transparent tones. I love how it stops neatly at the boundary! I’m addicted! I would love to hear what your favourite ‘finish’ is in terms of artwork.

Also me and my cutting machine ‘Rupert’ (the name changes every week) are kinda pushing the boundaries for just how much detail we can get. Every artistic process I have ever tried has boundaries and it’s kinda fun to experiment there and see how far that can be pushed. For example, I made a really detailed set of stencils with super thin shapes and extended areas, it’s the Forest Path layering stencil set, and it’s not for the faint hearted! I feel like that set probably contains the finest detail I can make in terms of thickness of shape and fine lines, Rupert done good! However, if I ever get my hands on a laser cutter…

This cake stencil is an opportunity to show off ink colours and fill out a card really quickly. Minimal sentiments will work best with busily coloured cards, but I can’t wait to make a minimally coloured cake card and pair it with some fancy lettering.

The cake is made by layering two of the stencils in the set. I normally start with the stencil containing the cake stand and icing, and colour those in first. In the pic above the cake stand is cherry red and the icing is deep chocolate.

If you then position the second stencil, containing the cake layers (here in lighter chocolate colour), you can choose to butt the layers up to the icing, (as in the first cake with honey glaze, at the start of this post), or you can slide the stencil down so that you cake layers butt up to the cake stand – this works best when your cake is lighter colour than your icing. It’s your cake, you decide if you want that classic stencil look, or if you want a more solid option. I had great fun playing with colour on these! The sentiments are from retired WMS sets ‘Eat Cake’ and ‘Frame-It’. Inks are a mixture of Stampin’ Up and Distress Inks. White gel pens for details. Ta for popping in!