Thursday's Dream Schemes/Free Challenge this Week!

Happy St. Patrick's Day...let's CELEBRATE! This beautiful " green" card comes to us from design team member, Laura Drahozal. Laura just got back from visiting the UK so we hope you will have time to visit her blog (follow the sidebar at the right to find your way). Be sure to go back a week on her blog to see some of her photos of the London area and some of her "card" work while she was there demonstrating at a very large crafting trade show in Birmingham. She even has a couple of her Dreamweaver cards pictured on her blog last week that are being shown on a QVC show in England. Today, on her blog, you will see a variation on this Celebrate card...leave a comment if you get the chance, we love to be encouraged.

This card began with Laura creating a background with the new plaid making stencil (LX7002). This new size of stencil is square and has a series of large and small stripes. It is great for several different backgrounds, you can use it to just stencil a background like Laura did. She used an applicator in her picture here or you can also use it with embossing paste. When the new DVDs are ready there will be a segment on using this stencil in a couple of different ways. That DVD is almost ready to go to press...(is that what they call it when they make a DVD???), or I guess I should say it is almost ready to go to the "Duplicators". We'll keep you posted on both of the DVD's progress. The paper that Laura started with was already green and had a narrow diagonal stripe in a darker green that she aligned her striped stencil against. She used distress inks to stencil in greens, then turned her stencil at a 90 degree angle and stenciled in blue.

The four leaf clover stencil (LS58) and the vertical celebrate stencil (LM283) were embossed on aluminum metal by running them through an embossing machine and then they were colored with a green Adirondack alcohol ink. Then to make the metal shine through she sands the embossed clovers and the celebrate sentiment with a sanding block.

The small four leaf clover that is hanging on the ribbon was shrink plastic. Laura is a master with using the stencils on shrink plastic to create these "lucky charms". She sands the shrink plastic first so the ink will adhere to the plastic and uses a 1/4" hole punch at the apex of the leaves, so that when it shrinks she will have somewhere on the charm to attach the ribbon to...don't forget since it will be shrinking you will want this hole to be fairly large. This little charm was then colored with green ink. "What type of ink?"...you ask. I believe she used the same alcohol inks that she used on the metal, but I have discovered that if you "do" sand the shrink plastic in advance then several different types of ink will work...Brilliance inks, Chalk inks, and permanent inks like Staz-on.

If you have questions about how Laura's card was made, please ask her in my comments section and she will pop by to answer when she gets the chance. Don't forget to visit the other members creations this week too.

Hope you take time this week to join our challenge...it doesn't have to be St. Patrick's Day themed... it doesn't have to be on metal...it doesn't even have to be a stencil, just make it something you want to share with us. It is a free challenge week, so play along if you get the chance and we'll come visit your blog to see what you have been up to, so just sign in on Mr. Linky below.