Christmas and the Holidays Challenge/This week...."the holidays"

The center leaf is first paste-embossed using the metallic gold embossing paste...read on to know more.

This month we are showcasing some of our new holiday stencils and dies. Some of you were wondering what our theme is and we are excited to have you play along. The challenge is open to interpretation for a Holiday extravaganza. Our new designs include Christmas and Fall holidays. Just want to let you in on a bit of our blog history and how we work our challenges....when we first started our blog we encouraged people to design with our stencils. But we discovered that a lot of people who did cardmaking and crafting didn't have stencils...so we changed up our requirements for the challenges to general cardmaking including using stamps. However things are achangin' and many people are stencil savvy. So next month we will be doing something to include both stencils and stamps.... also every once in awhile I have something different on my blog to see if you are paying attention and I have a random drawing for those who are leaving comments. Today I have something for the Zentangle artists out there. For those of you that are regulars you know that Wayne and I are a team when it comes to his Zentangle work on my blog. I create and render the card creation and Wayne does the sten-tangleation. This week if you are a zentangle enthusiast leave a comment and tell me what zentangle pattern you might like to use on these leaves. A single commenter will be randomly chosen for one of the new stencils of the leaf designs. Now here's how we did today's card...

I used the Color Solution Alcohol Inks to do the background first. It was done on digital cardstock that has a glossy type of finish. You can either squirt several alcohol ink colors and the thinner/cleaner onto your craft mat and then lay the paper on top and move it around or you can squirt the Color Solution Ink and thinner/cleaner on top of the paper and place a second piece onto that and smear the colors together. Both methods give some great results. Here is a sampling of the actual colors we have:

Next I traced the new oak leaf stencil (LL3043) onto the dried Color Solution inked card using an 01 size micron pen by Sakura, leaving a gap between those two outlined leaves. I then paste-embossed the maple leaf stencil (LL3044) using Dreamweaver Gold Embossing Paste (DGP) in the center of these outlined outer oak leaves and once this maple leaf was dry (about 30 minutes....I set mine on a warming pan to hasten the drying time to about 15 minutes), Wayne worked his magic by creating the tangleation with three different tangle patterns on the three leaves. The center tangle on the paste embossed gold leaf is a pattern called "betweed", the one on the left oak leaf is a pattern called "fassett" and the third main pattern on the right leaf is called "yincut". You can go to Linda Farmer's site, www.tanglepatterns.com to learn the step-by-step process of those three patterns. Wayne is amazing...he is an organized type of person and often chooses grid based patterns to work with. I love what he does and although I love the grid based patterns I am also very attracted to the organic patterns that he works with occasionally too. There is definitely something for everyone when it comes to this innovative art form. Wayne became a certified Zentangle instructor (CZT) and has encouraged me to do so as well. I am not quite there yet, but I do occasionally sit down and work with him, tangling away sometimes. In October we will be at the store Art 'n Soul in Lacey, Washington. The owners of that store do wonderful things with Zentangle and Wayne and I have been asked to demonstrate and teach for an annual Christmas event. Perhaps we will see some of you there.

Next Thursday on the blog: Happy Hallowthanksmas! 

And the team will also be doing 31 days of Halloween. 

We will announce this month's challenge winners on the first Thursday in October.

We choose two random winners from your challenge postings each month....one from the USA and one from another country (I've noticed we have a lot of UK challenge posts and many are using stencils, WOW! ....Great works of art!) Here is a picture from two UK winners that have won for their comments on the Woodware blog hop last month. Meet Diane and Julie! Thanks Diane for sending a picture. Looks like Julie is already creating for the next challenge. YAYA!

Now don't forget to visit the Dream it UP team this week to see what beauties they have created. We have been blessed this month to have guest designer Wendy Price joinng us. It is the highlight of my Thursdays seeing their creations. Please leave some comments for them because I think that is also one of the reasons they do this work for so little. We love to have the feedback.

Dream It Up!

Wendy Price Guest Designer

Lyn Bernatovich

Louise Healy

Alison Heikkila

Kristine Reynolds

Pam Hornschu

Gill Wilson

Kristi Parker Van Doren

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