Make some handmade winter cards with alcohol inks and a snowy stencil!

We’ve been sharing some ideas for handmade winter cards to give us all beautiful ways to send frosty greetings throughout the rest of the season. Today Lisa is taking us into a really fun direction with alcohol inks with one of our stencils and results are so spectacular! Lisa says “alcohol inks can be hard to use for someone who likes control of her crafty items, but if you can let some of that go, they can be tons of fun!”

Well, if this card is a result of being “out of control” we are thinking that might not be such a bad thing! Whenever Lisa experiments, we end up with a real treat, like with this card here. Let’s take a look at how Lisa created this so we can try it, too.

She started by cutting a panel of alcohol ink-friendly paper with one of the dies from our Nested Deckle Rectangle set. She chose a few different colors of alcohol inks, some blending solution and her alcohol ink air blower. She dropped some blending solution on the paper and then added some drops of her different inks.

While the ink was wet, Lisa used her blower to move the ink around the paper, adding drops of ink there and there and using drops of blending solution to re-wet any areas she wanted to keep moving. Lisa did this until she had the look she wanted.

Before setting aside her panel to dry, Lisa added a frosty look to her surface by adding a few drops of Snowcap Mixative into a pallette and evenly brushed it over the panel.

While her panel was drying, Lisa used our Happy Script With Shadow die to cut the script layer once from white glitter paper and once from thick white card stock, adhering them together with liquid glue for added thickness and dimension. She cut the background portion of the die set from purple card stock and added her stacked script on top.

Lisa then cut some white glitter paper using our Santa Mini die for the mittens and the hat shapes, coloring them up with her Copics and then adhering the pieces together with liquid glue.

When her inked panel was completely dry, Lisa laid our new Snowflake Stencil over it and used some more Snowcap Mixative, dripped into her pallette, and sponged it over the surface.

Lisa says “You will want to work quickly because it’s sticky and also be careful of any delicate pieces on your stencil.” She set this aside again to dry. PRO TIP: to clean up your stencil and work surface, Lisa spritzed a little rubbing alcohol over them and wiped them off with a cloth. This added another layer of that luminous metallic finish that gives this card such a wintry feel.

Lisa stamped a sentiment from our Snowmen with Presents in Magenta Color Fuse Ink from Set #6 onto a scrap of white card stock and closely trimmed out the word “Holiday” into a rectangle. She adhered her panel to a card base and arranged her die cut elements over the front using varying thicknesses of dimensional adhesive. A few sequins to echo the light reflection and this card was complete!

There’s no doubt that is a winter card, with those frosty shades and that almost icy finish – it’s so striking! And while Lisa made this to be a holiday card, turning it into a winter card for any occasion can be done just with the switch of the greeting!  Here are the things Lisa used from our store to make this beauty:

As we shared in this post, ideas for handmade winter cards can easily be borrowed from lots of different holiday cards. Just swap out the holiday specific images and greetings, swap IN something specific for the occasion you are celebrating and you will have card ideas for days!