With Sympathy

I know some of you love the new glitter technique. Deborah March has used the technique here with the cypress tree (LG650). This design has been around since 2002, and it really is a classic here at Dreamweaver Stencils and the way Deborah has mounted it, has made it look even classier! Deborah has been stamping and stenciling for some time and she never fails to amaze me with her work. This stencil is fairly large, and Deborah has used a large Nestability die to cut the double sided mounting paper and then used a scalloped one to cut out the metallic gold paper. She then paste embossed the With Sympathy stencil (LM174) using white embossing paste. Now be sure to stay in touch because Deborah will soon be bringing some major activity to the team's blogs.

Delicious, Sweet and what a Treat

Dream Team member, Liz Martin, used the Pearlescent Embossing Paste to create this shimmery treat using our ice cream sundae stencil (LL431). Once it was dry she repositioned the stencil and stenciled the entire area with the Palette Stamp and Stick Glue. Even though the instructions ask you to heat the glue to make it tacky...we have discovered that isn't necessary when you are applying the Metallic F/X, so she then stenciled the powders onto the glue while the stencil was still in position. You can use the Picasso stencil shield to keep the colors from overlapping or your can mask out the areas one at a time as you are stenciling. Liz stenciled the cherry and stem with ink and applied glitter glue to the whipped cream to give more dimension and sparkle. When the sundae was dry she cut the image with one of the oval Nestabilities dies using a die cutting machine. To top it off, (so to speak) she edged the piece with a bright pink ink and mounted it on the pink and brown striped cardstock. There will be more sweet things to come...so pay attention if you have a sweet tooth.

Balboa Park

These two scrapbook pages by designer Laura Drahozal are a Dreamweaver Stencils extravaganza. First she stenciled the waterlily background stencil (LJ861) onto blue cardstock using green and pink inks. Then she used translucent embossing paste over the entire stencil. Once it was dry she die cut the Balboa Park title with an alphabet die on her die cutting machine. The thing that makes this so amazing is that she must have repeated the stenciling and translucent embossing paste process two or three times to get that many letters die cut. (A work of love for her scrapbook.) She also paste embossed and stenciled the dragonflies and lily pad stencil (LM136) a couple of times and cut those out by hand once they were dry. The koi fish (LG701) were dry embossed on metal through one of the embossing/die cutting machines, and colored with alcohol inks. Then she cut those out by hand as well. They are beautiful and this process sort of reminds me of the red metallic leafing used on copper paste. I know I have said this before but, "the pictures don't do it justice". I am sure she must love to have these pages in her scrapbook to remember those lily pads and koi fish that are shown in her pictures of beautiful Balboa Park. If it wasn't for the horrendous Labor Day weekend traffic I would head down there this weekend to experience them myself. Laura, if you are reading this, feel free to make comments on the process. Also remind me how you did the stitching to connect the fish. Was that done by hand or a machine?

Sing Hallelujah!

Hallelujah! This card is saying how I feel tonight about the Dreamweaver Dream Team. The team's new challenge cards are starting to come in and some of the team members are starting to post these on their blogs. (Be sure to take a look...their blog links are listed here on my site.) I am so excited about all the new things I have to show you, but for the next week I will be showcasing a "last Hurrah" to cards made by the team this summer. Next I will give just a bit of a tease for things to come. "Shhh...don't tell anyone, they'll banish us you know"... (oh, my! sometimes I just can't get Emily Dickinson out of my head). Anyway, I digress, things to come...things to come. Oh, yeah! I was saying... look for something fun coming soon to our blogging team. Do you like good things to eat? What is sweet and spun from sugar and often pink? Like this pretty card made by Dream Team member Louise Healy.

I had to give her a bit of a talking to for tearing up an old hymnal, but the background is just so appropriate for the new Hallelujah stencil (LM2007) that I couldn't feel too bad. (I used to collect old hymnals.) She gently brushed a brown ink across the paper to antique it a bit more, even though it really is from an old hymnal I think the antiquing really adds to the overall aged effect. Next she pasted the word across a portion of torn page using the Pearlescent Embossing Paste. The string of pink beads seems to pull the torn pieces of music together. I do love this card. Anyone needing a lift would love getting this in the mail...I am trying to figure out how to reproduce the piece of music just in case I need to send a music loving friend a similar masterpiece. Any suggestions Louise?

Scrapbooking.Com

Hey, everyone! We are moving into the holiday weekend and some of you are having your last hurrah at the beaches and your other favorite vacation spots...do enjoy. As I am thinking of my own plans I was reminded that Pam Hornschu has done a couple of beautiful scrapbook pages of past vacations. She has been featured this week on scrapbooking.com with another page as well. Also, a week ago, they named her blog ..."Blog of the Week". She deserves it and she does a great job writing about her design work. The page you see here features a background stencil we call "petals" (LJ899). She stenciled it onto a light aqua paper using a slightly darker ink and a larger 3/4" stencil brush. She then used a variety of shell stencils to add interest to the lower half of the page; the nautilus, the sand dollar and the scallop shell and the numbers are respectively,LM104, LR12, LM106. I love how she seemed to literally tie it all together with the off-white twine for a nautical look. Great job Pam!

Pastel Polly

Polly Weed has been stenciling with Dreamweaver Stencils for many eons, almost as many eons as me. LOL! She has a very distinctive style. She usually stencils with pastels and then uses either the regular Dreamweaver embossing paste on top of this or the translucent embossing paste which she then sprinkles with glitter. This particular card she has veered slightly from her usual style, but she has maintained her signature technique as she still loves those pretty soft pastel colors. The way she achieved this beautiful little Christmas tree (LG729) is by mixing just a bit of green tube acrylic paint into the glossy white embossing paste. This is the best way to make your own pastel colored paste. The glossy white paste has white pigment in it and adding small amounts of tube acrylic color will give you just about any pastel color that you want. She finished off this beautiful card by adding some crystals throughout the coiled area of the tree. Just for a different twist on this card design, I put a small amount of the Navajo Blue Metallic F/X, maybe 1/4 tsp. into 2 Tbsp. of pearlescent embossing paste and pasted this second coil Christmas tree. One nice thing about using the Metallic F/X is that it is dry and you don't have to worry about adding wetness to the paste which would make it a bit sloppy to paste. I find that adding the crystals using the "grab-it" tool while the paste is still wet works best for me. The design team is working on a new challenge and we will be posting some of their work soon...and there are rumors of a blog hop in the near future. Stay tuned for more.

Julie from Down Under

Julie Makela lives just south of Brisbane, Queensland in Australia. She is an absolute marvel when it comes to using Dreamweaver Stencils. In the past few years she finished her degree in Art and her love for mixed media shows in everything she does. I am always fascinated with her ability to layer and cut things. Here I am showing cards she has done using some of this mixed media pizzazz. Behind the penguins she sculpted white emboss paste to create the mountains. The penguins (LL560) were paste embossed with black embossing paste onto an acetate film and once they were dry she turned the piece over. Using just a bit of the white embossing paste on a brush...she painted their bellies and other white parts on the back of the acetate. Then when that was dry she cut the acetate close to their heads and mounted them on the mountains, hiding the mounting tape on the reverse side of the penguins.

The lizards (LM2004) were done in a similar manner, pasted onto acetate, however this time she sprinkled glitter onto the wet embossing paste. When this was dry she turned the acetate over and colored the back of the acetate using acrylic on a brush, then when this dried she cut out the lizards and mounted them with foam mounting tape onto a white cardstock. This white paper was dry embossed with the petal background stencil (LJ899) and just a bit of ink was loaded onto either a large foam dauber or large stencil brush and then brushed across the dry embossed petals to leave a hint of color.

Julie is the one responsible for teaching me the "JAC" paper technique...remember the cardinal that Louise Healy did early on...I mentioned how Julie does this unique effect in one of my first blog postings. I hope to see Julie Makela at CHA in 2011 and I know she will be sharing some new techniques at one of the booths there. Stay in touch to hear more as we get closer to the New Year. By the way Julie, when you get a chance to read this...if one of the above steps is not quite right just let us know in the comment section.