One Stencil - two very different patterns!

I've been playing with the Pinkfresh Studio Diamond Framework Stencil this week and wanted to share my results. I loved the two tone results you get which give an instant 3D look to the diamonds, but I also thought it would make a fun overlapping diamond pattern so here are my two cards with very different patterns!

First off I started simple - just the standard pattern as intended using two shades of teal distress oxides for the blending. I then added a floral element cut from the Pinkfresh Studio Cosy Blooms Washi Tape - although these are designed to be cut with the matching die, doing that without first backing it onto card is difficult so I fussy cut them as I wanted the diamon pattern to still show through. Its pretty easy to fussy cut washi as you don't have to be too precise as the unprinted areas don't really show much.

For a fun twist on the usual sentiment placement, I opted to stamp a simple happy birthday around the central diamond - I used The Greetery's Curio Labels Stamp for mine but any small happy birthday would work and you could switch out for any other greeting like get well, hello or anything that suits your needs.

For the second card we come to the trickier overlapping of the pattern. I did quite a few practice attempts - it does overlap but it's not as perfect as I hoped. It will only repeat horiztonally - I tried to shift it down first and that was a disaster! I had thought of doing just a second colour - maybe red and green so I could do a Christmas card - but again, the gapping didn't work with that. To get a pattern that looks correct you need 4 repeats. I still wanted to go Christmassy so I opted for yellow, green, teal and coral red, starting with yellow - you get lots of "extra" colours where the diamonds overlap but I do think the end result is quite fun. Below are shots I took after adding colours 2, 3 and 4 so you can see where I shifted.

To make it into a card I wanted to add a star with my sentiment but couldn't make any colour pop the way I wanted to so added a random circle of vellum that was sitting in my scraps box behind my yellow star and realised it looked like a bauble so my design grew from there. I added a bauble topper from one of The Greetery's Jumbo Ornament dies and a sprig of holly from The Greetery's Curio Attic Ornaments Die and popped it on top of the patterned background just with glue behind the star so it wouldn't show. I added a stitched rectangle frame to cover the twine i used to "hang" the bauble.