Dreamweaver and Imagine Crafts: Endless Possibilities-Day Four

 Welcome to our first ever collaboration week with Imagine Crafts/Tsukineko! We've shared all of our toys on both sides, so be prepared for Endless Possibilities! Three prize packages are available, each containing one set of each of these inks and stencils/dies. Just leave comments on each post of each day this week (June 9th - June 13th) for a chance to win! Winners will be announced on Tuesday, June 17th!

Imagine Crafts New StazOn Pads from Tsukineko

Stencils and Dies Prize Package

Here's my creation for today... if you are here to see who the random winner is of "should we make the elephant stencil a die?"....scroll down to the very bottom of this post. Before I get going here is the wonderful line up of designers today. I have added this list to the bottom of my post as well.

Dream It Up!

Pam Hornschu

Darsie Bruno

Isha Gupta 
Kristi Parker Van Doren

Louise Healy

Sylvia Blum 

Gill Wilson

Kristine Reynolds 

Baerbel Born

Laura Drahozal 

Lea Kimmel  

Alison Heikkila

New Stylized Dahlia Die (DG743)

There's so much to say today! We've been having such a great time with the Imagine Crafts blog hop that I almost forgot it's Thursday and the "Old, New, Borrowed, Blue- Challenge" is on some of your minds. Again I went CRAZY with some of these NEW products and it wasn't hard to showcase both our challenge and our blog hop.

First of all I BORROWED from Dream it UP team members Louise Healy and Pam Hornschu...they are always fun to "CASE" (which means copy and say everything). Using the idea of designing both the negative and positive portion of a die cut was a great idea they had and it was a blast to play with and as you will see...the Tsukineko Neon inkpads (NEW to me) are addictive too. Also NEW to me is our new stylized dahlia die (DG743). The two thank you sentiments (LG691) are on the same stencil and the stylized dahlia stencil (LG743) have both been around the block, so OLDer is on today's agenda and as you can tell by this first sample blue is also used (well turquoise is a variety of blue right?). So OLD, NEW, BORROWED AND BLUE!!! and of course welcome to our hop with the wonderful Imagine Crafts design team. Be sure to leave them some TLC in the way of some encouraging comments on what you enjoyed the most about their post for today!

Stylized Dahlia stencil (LG743) used with the (DG743) new die

Here is the second card which is "the positive" part of the cards I CASEd from Louise and Pam.

At this point I will do a tutorial so you can see how  this all came together. I know that many of you are like me and seeing things created can really clear up technique issues.

The very first thing that I did was the background ...this is where I had so much fun with the Neon inkpads from Imagine Crafts. I don't know how many of you remember the fabric called "seersucker" or "plissé", but this embossed plaid fabric of yesteryear was my inspiration for the background.

The NEW Neon pigment inkpads by Imagine Crafts/Tsukineko

The plaid stencil (LX7002) was first placed onto a piece of scrap paper and the Electric Green  Neon inkpad was tapped all over the striped design.

The thick white mat is placed onto the Big Shot with a piece of pink scrap paper added to keep things from getting inky. Then the inked stencil was added. VERY IMPORTANT...the stripes of the stencil need to go in the direction of the black stripes you see on the machine in the background. If not your stencil could get tweaked and ruined in the process. This is only a discovery I made after we tweaked about three stencils in a class I was teaching. I had place the stencil perpendicular to those lines instead of parallel and the roller twisted the stencil. (Experience can be an expensive teacher.)

This is the finished stack. Thick white plate with the tabs following through behind.  Pink scrap to keep things clean. The metal stencil with the stripes parallel with the black stripes on the machine. The Stamping Details thick rubber mat --you can buy it at stencilwithstyle.com. Finish off with two acrylic plates and run this stack through the machine.

Please take note...although these bowed acrylic plates are fine for die cutting they are really hard on your stencil if you are trying to emboss with them through your embossing machine....your stencil will become bowed just like the curved plate you see here.  My suggestion is to use a set of acrylic plates only for dies (they will end up like this one). Then get a fresh set and use them only with your stencils. You won't be sorry...it is worth every penny.

Clean off the LX7002 plaid making stencil by wiping it with a dry paper towel and prepare it with the blue Neon inkpad the same as you did with the green Neon. But remember to place the stencil on the scrap paper in the same direction at you did the first time, BUT this time turn the paper you have already run through so that it is perpendicular to the stencils stripes. Complete the stack as you did above and run it through the machine.

Your paper is now embossed and colored using the same process...I call this a form of letterpress. This is what makes it look like seersucker fabric which was often plaid and kind of puckery or embossed. 

I put some of the Dreamweaver Matte Black Embossing Paste onto the paste spreader, this makes it easier to paste on the uneven embossed surface of the plaid paper.

Tape out the edges of the stencil and paste-emboss the  surface of the embossed background paper. Use a gentle pressure so it doesn't squish under the stencil. 

Remove three sides of the tape and using the last piece of tape as a hinge remove the stencil. Set this paste-embossed image aside to dry while you are die-cutting your Dahlia pieces.

I am adding a double mounting sticky paper (MPDS) to the back of my pink floral paper, by removing one side of the release paper and putting the tacky side against the back you can then run it through the machine and remove the other release paper later when you want to add the now sticky pieces to the dry embossing paste.

The stack for die cutting is slightly different. The thick white plate and both tabs are used...in fact I add an additional piece of chipboard as a shim. Next use one of the acrylic plates, the floral paper face up, the Dahlia die (DG743) and top it off with your second acrylic plate. Now run this through the machine.

Remove the die and use our tiny tipped stylus (ETXSM) which great for poking out hard to remove die pieces. Then remove the second release paper from each piece and mount onto the dry Matte Black paste-embossed image.

I also used our NEW oval nesting dies to die cut some of the same floral paper for the vertical thank you (LG691) and paste-embossed it with the Dreamweaver Matte Black Embossing Paste (DMBP). Also added was just a bit of bling in the way of four crystals down the side of the flower. I added one other color of paper (yellow) for the blossoms for added interest.

As I said earlier this week I have kind of gone crazy creating with the NEW inks and materials sent by Tsukineko/Imagine Crafts...so below is another creation I did with the Neon inkpads and as you can tell I have plenty of plaid "seersucker" paper for future projects too. Be sure to link up below with inlinkz if you are here for this month's challenge and of course all the designers are waiting to find out what you think of the beauties they have created for you this week...can't wait to see what they've done as well!

Dream It Up!

Pam Hornschu

Darsie Bruno

Isha Gupta
Kristi Parker Van Doren 

Louise Healy

Sylvia Blum 

Gill Wilson

Kristine Reynolds 

Baerbel Born

Laura Drahozal 

Lea Kimmel  

Alison Heikkila

LG756 elephant and LX7014 Daisies

RANDOM WINNER of the Dream it UP comment-ary on whether or not you would buy a die of the elephant design is:

Janice K. who said, " A die would be great especially if you produced a smaller (baby elephant) size one as well".

Hi Janice, please email me your snail mail addy at lynell@dreamweaverstencils.com
and I will send you the following: read on....

It's your day LG704 stencil and LX7002 plaid maker stencil

We are sending you the hot pink and bright orange Neon inkpads from Imagine Crafts and the elephant stencil LG756. Thank you for reading through my blog carefully and contributing to the vote and comment-ary as to whether or not we should make this elephant into a die. We have decided to make a smaller stencil version of the elephant and a die of both sizes and we'll give it a try ....based on the comments of our customers.

An InLinkz Link-up