Christmas in August with Woodware: Hop Day Six...Finale!

Yes! It's that time of year again! The time when we inspire crafters on both sides of the "pond" with a mix of both Dreamweaver and Woodware UK* products for the holidays! Six days, SIX, of beautiful, elegant, merry, cute, artsy, and craftsy projects to have you heading out to your local stores or internet sites to buy these goodies immediately!

Of course, there are prizes as well. Three prize packages will be given to three commenters during this week's posts on the team's blogs, including five stencils and one nested die set. You can have an opportunity to win these goodies by leaving some holiday sweetness for each team member posting each day, to be one of the three winners for the week. Here are the team members that are inspiring you today:

Dream It Up!

Woodware UK

Kristine Reynolds

Jamie Martin

Pam Hornschu

Louise Healy

Lyn Bernatovich

Alison Heikkila

Lynn Mercurio

Lea Kimmel

Gill Wilson

Laura Drahozal 

Dorothy Adam

Here's my creation for the grand finale:

The Baubles on the left of this card are from Woodware's new Christmas Stamp Collection and the "Believe" is a Dreamweaver Stencils classic (LM224).

For most of the week I showed how to use the Dreamweaver Embossing Pastes...the Believe stencil (LM224) which you see here was paste-embossed with Metallic Gold Embossing Paste (DGP), but because it is a slightly different color than the gold embossing powder used on my stamped baubles, I decided to sprinkle the same gold powder onto the wet gold paste and heat it...so they would all be similar. Not exact...but it is close. 

But my tutorial today is about the background paper that I made with our Color Solution Alcohol inks. I used three colors from our winter collection: Noble Fir, Iceberg and Sugarplum.

I dripped these colors onto a piece of glossy digital paper. Our alcohol inks come out one drop at a time, but if you want a steady flow of ink take a pin or paper clip and poke it into the nozzle, this will break the barrier and ink will flow.

You'll notice that the colors are very saturated compared to the final effect. The process evolves by diluting these colors with the thinner or blending solution. 

Drip the thinner all over the alcohol inks. (By the way you could also do the initial drops on a craft mat, but I wanted more papers finished at the and with more vibrant colors.)

 At this point take a second piece of the same glossy cardstock and smear the two pieces together so that you are creating mirror images of the colors.

This is still quite bright for my baubles so I will drip more of the thinner onto the original ink and  use another piece of cardstock to dilute the image.

Now I have two muted images and one very muted image...just where I want it to be for my bauble background. I stamped the three bauble images with Versamark and then sprinkled them with gold embossing powder and heated them.

A few flecks of gold embossing powder on the final creation adds to the fun. To further embellish I also glued on a variety of sequins and flatback crystals. Here's a close-up to get a better idea of how things look.

So don't forget to make some comments on the team's creations. You never know where the random winners will be chosen from...thank you for all of your lovely comments this week and stop back to see who has won: WINNERS WILL BE ANNOUNCED ON MY USUAL THURSDAY POSTING!

*For a stockist near you contact Woodware Craft Collection in the UK and Notions Marketing in the USA.