Thursday, March 28, 2013

Thursday's Dream Schemes/Bloomin' Spring

Faux Cloixonné technique by Elaine Benedict

Elaine Benedict is formerly a teacher and sales rep from the Chicago area that has recently retired to North Carolina. Just talked to her this morning and she is still in the stencil teaching mode. Yesterday she taught 10 women in the development where she and husband, Jay, are building their retirement home. Sounds like a lot of fun Elaine!

I am presenting two of her stylized dahlia (LG743) cards and each one is done with a different stenciling technique. 

This first card is a technique called faux cloisonné. One of my favorites, it requires a base of matte embossing paste (usually either white DEP or yellow DMYP). Once it is dry, reposition the stencil and add color by stenciling with pigment inks and next sprinkle (the tip here is to "sprinkle" and not totally coat the ink during this step) this wet ink with Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel (UTEE), heat it with a heat gun and stencil with a darker hue of the same color of pigment ink. This time you can completely coat the darker color with Ultra thick and heat once more. The two colors of pigment ink sandwiched with the Ultra Thick really give some interesting effects. It almost looks crackled doesn't it?




This second card was done on white cardstock. She began by dry embossing the dahlia stencil (LG743) through an embossing machine. Remember to stack the stencil in the middle of the thick white plate, then the paper, then the thick rubber mat (REM), then the two acrylic clear plates. This will protect the stencil from bending.
Next she stenciled the flower petals with a golden yellow pigment ink and the leaves with green pigment ink. Now with the dahlia stencil still in place she layered dots from the picasso stencil shield (LL332) on the upper petals and the Pop Art stencil (LJ915) on the lower petals with black pigment ink. Then she used a darker green pigment ink on the leaves and layered the LJ863 swirls stencil over the top of the dahlia stencil. Layering stencils is a unique way to add interest to your design work.

Thanks Elaine for these beautiful samples.

This is the last week of our challenge and you still have time to post a card to mr. linky below. Click HERE to do so. Or go there to see what everyone else has posted to mr. linky for the monthly challenge. I have been looking at everyone's Spring creations and really enjoying it. Check back on Monday to find out who our random winner is. I would do it sooner, but with Easter weekend ahead I know we will all be busy until the next week. And I will outline our next month's challenge as well.

Now remember to take a minute to visit the blogs of our design team. This will be the last week for a couple of the team members before our new team starts posting in April. Be sure to leave them some love in the form of some heartfelt comments:

7 comments:

Louise said...

Beautiful as always Elaine! This has become one of my favorite stencils, I especially love the yellow one. Happy Easter!

Pam Hornschu said...

I almost posted with the same stencil! Wonderful creations as usual, Elaine!

sommrstamping said...

ELAINE ... I always love your cards, they are truly inspiring. I love bot hthe cards you did here but the yellow and black really caught my eye.

JD/ Jill said...

Both cards are awesome...another stencil for on my wish list...must try these techniques...thanks for sharing.

Anonymous said...

Elaine, you always do such excellent work! Thank you so much for the creative ideas.

Cherylynn said...

Elaine's work is always so inspiring and these two most definitely are! Thanks for sharing.

Caroline D. said...

Both cards are amazing!! Just beautiful!

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