Thursday's Dream Schemes/Faux Cross Stitch and the Plaidmaking Stencil

Welcome to Thursday's Dream Schemes...it is a free challenge week for the team and I have decided to do the Faux Cross-stitch Technique and also use the new stripe stencil (LX7002) to do some plaidmaking with the Memories Mists sprays as you see in the background of this card.

The faux cross stitch technique was done on top of the Dreamweaver Embossing Paste (DEP) after it was dry. To do this simple technique first paste the two owls stencil (LL3013), remove the stencil and set the pasted cardstock aside for half an hour to dry. While it is drying you can do the background. Our new Plaid maker stencil is a stencil with stripes. You can place your cardstock in a cardboard box, and position the striped stencil on this cardstock and spray it with the Memories Mist color green tea (MM19)... holding the spray bottle about 12-18 inches away from the stencil. Then gently pick up the stencil and turn it 90 degrees and place it on the same cardstock so the next stripes will be perpendicular to the first ones you sprayed with the green tea color. This time use the Wheatgrass color (MM05) to now create the plaid effect. Just a couple of spritzes with the Memories Mists spray bottle is all you need. You want wherever the colors overlap to be somewhat translucent to create that third color and if you spray too heavily you won't get this effect.

Now that the paste is dry, reposition the stencil (LL3013) onto the owls, and very lightly stencil some soft tones onto the owls...I used pale gray, and light brown pigment inks onto the owls and yellow onto beaks and talons and finish this first layering with a pale green on the leaves. Next position a small piece of fiberglass screen (SC) at a diagonal on top of the stencil using removable tape. Now this time you will want to stencil darker colors through the screen, dark grays onto the light gray and dark brown onto the light brown areas. The beak and branch also receive the darker brown and the leaves a brighter green. Remove the screen and stencil their eyes with a dark gray or black ink.

The saying was done digitally but I used the "hoot" stencil (LG734) and made just a bit of bright green embossing paste by mixing green tube acrylic into my regular matte embossing paste (DEP).

If anyone would like to play along you can do so. The faux cross stitch technique is quite simple and there are variations on it too. You can dry emboss first instead of paste-embossing or you can stencil directly onto cardstock. If you are interested in the instructions you can email me at lynell@dreamweaverstencils.com and as for the Faux Cross-stitch instruction sheet and I will email them to you.