Thursday's Dream Schemes/Gearing up for Change

Dreamweaver is gearing up for change. We have 16 new designs that we released to the retail market a couple of weeks ago in Chicago. This sampler represents several of the new background designs. I was inspired by a card that design team member Louise Healy did recently. So I CASEd her creation. Take time to visit the design team's creations by following their names on the sidebar to the right of my post. Here is our sketch for today done by Deborah March (I think...if I am not correct someone please correct me in the comment section.)

To give this card a sharp edginess I cut a two and half inch round out of pewter. I am finding that I love to work with the pewter metal ...it is very soft and malleable. I ran the gear stencil (LJ911) through my die cutting machine with a thin rubber mat and two acrylic plates on top of that. Once through I left the stencil in place and used a paper stump to further emboss the back of the metal by rubbing the stump across the metal and pushing it into the stencil. This serves a dual purpose...not only does it push the metal out to round it a bit more but it also helps to release the metal from the stencil. I then removed the metal and tapped the entire embossed side with a Staz-on ink pad by Tsukineko. I let this ink dry for just a few seconds then took a soft rag made of an old t-shirt and gently rubbed off the excess black ink. I repeated the process on a small piece of metal which I had cut one inch square for the lower right gear. 

The background was stenciled in pigment ink colors on a piece of chipboard. The chipboard gives this steampunk creation a recycled appearance. The stencils used were the stripe stencil (LX7002), the houndstooth (LJ913), the small cathedral window (LJ909), and the optical art (LJ915). The gears were mounted with small pieces of foam mounting tape and then all was backed on a piece of glossy black cardstock.

I have alluded to change, so stay tuned for a different schedule in our blogging. Occasionally the team will all be designing with the exact same stencil and since one of the reasons we love to craft and blog is because we are technique junkies, so we will all be presenting the same technique at the same time. We will also be putting out a challenge for those of you who may want to join the design team. Keep tuned to our blogs and gear up for a wonderful Fall season of crafting with Dreamweaver Stencils. Hope you have fun creating this week. If you are interested in seeing what the team has done follow the sidebar at the right to visit their sites. If you decide to follow the challenge just use Mr. Linky below and we will enjoy having you play along. You can also email me a creation and I will post it here for you. My email is: lynell@dreamweaverstencils.com