Week #5 of Our Mystical and Magical Challenge

Happy Halloween! This week concludes our Mystical and Magical challenge and is your last opportunity to link up below for a random chance to win a stencil of your choosing from Dreamweaver Stencils. If you want to know more about how to link your creation click HERE.

Thanks again to our guest designer, Alison Heikkila for her wonderful creations during this Spooktacular event. Be sure to follow the links listed below for the Dream it UP team's and her great posts.

Because of the busy-ness in my life, the card today was done by former design team member, Georgia Sommers. Georgia lives and teaches in the bay area. Click HERE to view some of her class projects and find out more if you are interested in taking a class from her.

Georgia created the clouds with the stencil shield called "picasso" (LL332). The paper she used is the pale blue color that you see. Then she stenciled on top of this with shades of purples and toned blues inks. Wherever the shield (LL332) was in place the pale blue paper showed through to make the clouds seem like light was showing through them. The bats stencil (LL525) was then paste-embossed with glossy black embossing paste (DGKP) and sprinkled (while the paste was still wet) with Metallic F/X mica powders in colors of Moonstone, Pixie Blush and Plum Royale. Then when this was drying she cut out the tree using our new die (DX7020) and set it aside to apply later. The words in the lower corner are from the bird words stencil (LG734) and were paste-embossed with the matte black paste (DMBP). Why the matte paste instead of the glossy again? ...it dries faster. The black tree die cut added at the end was just what this spooky card needed. Now please follow the list below and please leave your comments as you make the rounds to what they have to share.

Alison Heikkila (guest designer)

Terrece Siddoway

Cherylynn Moser

Pam Hornschu

Lea Kimmel

Lyn Bernatovich

Louise Healy

October's Mystical and Magical Challenge Week #4

Our challenge this month has been anything mystical and magical and of course Alison Heikkila who is the queen of cardmaking magic is our mystical guest this month. I have to admit I have been in awe of her work...she seems to always pull something wonderful out of her bag of creativity every single week and if you've been noticing she has been posting every single day this month. (It's her favorite time of year). Thanks so much for your time Alison...and also a special thank you to everyone who has been joining our challenge this month. If you are needing to know how to join the challenge...click HERE. If you don't have a blog but would like to join the challenge just email me a picture of your work and I will post it for you here on my site. Our random winner will get to choose their favorite stencil.
lynell@dreamweaverstencils.com

The Great Pumpkin LL3036

Now for the mystical work of Autumn's magic. The name of this pumpkin stencil is "The Great Pumpkin"(LL3036) and has been so much fun to work with this Fall. Reminds me of all those years of watching Charlie Brown Fall specials on the tellie and his monologue regarding "THE" pumpkin. Yes, once again...not very scary, but we all have our niches and I would rather plod along with Charlie than Poe. Bwwaahaahaa... yes, some of us aren't naturally creepy. But I promise to keep working on it.

As per usual, Wayne helped with the zentangle design you see inside the pumpkin. First he traced the stencil with a micron pen and then did a pattern called "betweed" in the open spaces. He then hands it over to me for the stenciling aspect. I used pigment ink and often do for stenciling, but dye inks work really well too. The brown and orange striped May Arts Ribbon was paste-embossed using the thanks stencil (LS1006) with the regular matte white embossing paste (DEP) and once the paste is dry the cleaned stencil was repositioned and pigment ink was stenciled onto the image. The pumpkins in the background (LL514) were stenciled with pigment ink and then they were defined just a bit with an 01 micron black ink pen (30181) by Sakura. I had a lot of fun doing the color...here's hoping you have a wonderful week doing the same. Don't forget to follow the links below for our guest Alison and the rest of the team to see what magic they have been creating.

Alison Heikkila (guest designer)
Lea Kimmel 
Louise Healy 
Stacey Rumsby 
Terrece Siddoway 
Wendy Jordan 
Pam Hornschu 

Thursday's Dream Schemes: Week #3 of the Mystical and Magical Challenge

Jennifer Dove's Halloween Creation

Jennifer Dove sent me this Halloween card she did a couple months ago for our summer challenge. Thanks Jenn...it goes beautifully with our mystical and magical challenge this month too and since helping my daughter with her wedding has me in over my head on projects I am taking advantage of your beautiful work. And even though we have a wonderful guest artist this month ... I am using your creations too. Thanks to both of you. Below I am linking the detailed version of this repost from Jennifer's site.

Before I share some of the details of her card just want to clue some of you in on our challenge this month. We are joined this month by guest designer Alison Heikkila, whose ability to "do creepy" is well known. Be sure to follow the list below and visit her blog, plus the entire dream team is truly outdoing themselves with mystical/magical posts this month. You could be a random winner and if you are not sure how to post click HERE and sign up with the linky tool below. THANK YOU so much for considering AND posting your wonderful creations! We have had several of you enter this month already...YAY!!!

Jenn Dove's creation shown here was done with two of the Dreamweaver Stencils...the bats (LL525) and the retro kitty (LL3020). Jenn actually traced the bats onto felt and cut them out. The kitty was paste-embossed using the matte black embossing paste (DMBP) onto acetate. I love the embossing paste used this way, it really opens up the creative window.

Now don't forget to go down the mystical/magical path and visit Alison and the rest of the team...leaving some comments along the way.

Alison Heikkila 

Laura Drahozal  
Pam Hornschu 
Heidi Erickson 
Louise Healy  
Cyndi Bundy

Thursday's Dream Schemes: Week #2 of the Mystical and Magical Challenge

 Hop on board the Dream Team train as we journey through all things Mysterious and Magical through the month of October. Our guest "engineer" is Miss Eerie herself, Alison Heikkila. October promises to be a very bumpy ride...
Remember you could be the random winner if you join the challenge by linking up with the linky tool below.

I have to admit that I admire her ability to make it seem so effortless. As I look at my own "creepy" creations, they seem a bit tame. But that's what it's all about isn't it?...finding your creative tempo and doing what you do best and for me, I love admiring my  cohorts creations as well. Please take time at the end of my post to see what the Dream it UP team is doing this month too, and remember they could use a bit of TLC with your lovely comments. Also...click HERE if you are not sure how to post your creation to our challenge. If you don't have a blog but would like to join please email me a picture of your creation and I will post it here for you. lynell@dreamweaverstencils.com

I am featuring "The Great Pumpkin" stencil today, but be sure to come back next week for another post or two to see another zentangle creation by Wayne.

The Great Pumpkin stencil LL3036

My thank you card today is a collaboration with Wayne, my co-creator, he is CZT and Zentangle comes easy to him. I then, love the color portion of cardmaking and have put it all together into a card. We make a pretty good team if I do say so myself. ;)

Wayne traced the "Great Pumpkin" stencil (LL3036) and then used an 01 micron pen by Sakura (01) to tangle inside the lines. I used the Picasso stencil shield (LL332) to create the clouds on the dotted swiss paper from Bazzill using pigment ink. I also put the pumpkin stencil on top of the tangled pumpkin and stenciled each segment with a different color of ink. Then I put a halo of color around the pumpkin using a large brush and finished this portion by mounting it onto purple cardstock. Once I mounted this onto the cloud stenciled cardstock I paste-embossed the bat (LL525) onto the corner of the card and next the thank you stencil (LG691). Both of these were paste-embossed with the Matte Black Embossing Paste (DMBP). Once dry, the card was mounted on a couple other colors of cardstock for an upbeat patchwork look.  And the bat's eyes were dabs of florescent orange ink. A little bit creepy, huh, Alison? Maybe there's hope yet.

Now take a minute to view more fun creations from the best team in the world!

Alison Heikkila (guest designer)
Lea Kimmel 
Louise Healy 
Stacey Rumsby 
Terrece Siddoway 
Wendy Jordan 
Pam Hornschu 
Cherylynn Moser

Batty Batty AcroBat/A Mystical and Magical Month

This wonderful card using the LL525 bat stencil was sent to me from Georgia Sommers. Thanks! Georgia! I call Georgia's creations Georgious, because...well, they just are. She started with a white piece of cardstock and stenciled off the rounded edges of the Picasso stencil shield (LL332) using a large stencil brush with a medium toned purple ink. Then once the clouds were created she swished in just a bit of golden yellow, also with a large brush. Then she paste-embossed the bat stencil (LL525) with the Glossy Black Embossing Paste (DGKP), removed the stencil and while the bats were still wet sprinkled them with Goldfinch, Kiwi and Purple Velvet Metallic F/X powders....which can be purchased through www.stencilwithstyle.com

Click HERE to discover how to join our challenges and remember if you don't have a blog you are welcome to email me your creation at lynell@dreamweaverstencils.com and I will post it for you, much like I did for Georgia's card today. So when you email to me, please write a brief description of how the card was created.

Mystical and Magical....a New Challenge/Plus a winner from Awesome Autumn

 Hop on board the Dream Team train as we journey through all things Mysterious and Magical through the month of October. Our guest "engineer" is Miss Eerie herself, Alison Heikkila. October promises to be a very bumpy ride...

Last month we had so much happening I had a time keeping up with it all. As we venture further into the holiday time zone I know you are all very busy, but we would love to have you join our challenge this month. Some of you have indicated you would like to play along but you are not quite sure how to link...so click HERE for more info on how to use the linky tool below.

We always list our last month's challenge winner on the first Thursday posting of the next month as we introduce the next month's challenge. Our random winner for our Awesome Autumn challenge is:

JILL

YAY!!!....and thank you for your participation and lovely comments too.

I know, it may be a bit odd, as the owner of this company that I post weekly...but it does force me to sit down to design and follow a challenge occasionally. I loved last month's blog hop with Quietfire Stamp Designs because I noticed that Suzanne, the owner, does the same thing. Her calligraphy rubber stamp sentiments really bring about a sense of peace to me. Thanks again to the Quietfire team for such a fun hop.

This week, I will be presenting the bat stencil (LM525), and I hope to show some creations of other people using this design over the next few days so be sure to check back to see different techniques that can be used with this amazing acrobat...hmmm acroBAT:

I have never really found bats spooky, but rather amazingly mysterious. The way they fly in the dark via sonar is truly magical to me. They really seem to defy reason, and in actuality as more and more is discovered about them science has described their antics and they are even more amazing to me. 

The bats in the above creation were paste-embossed using the matte black embossing paste (DMBP). The background stencil which is called Pop-art (LJ915) was dry embossed through the embossing machine. Then a purple pigment ink was stroked across the embossing using a large stencil brush (we have an instruction flyer called Embossed Strié -TS15 that you can order at www.stencilwithstyle.com that describes this process in detail). Our new tree die (DX7020) was cut out of black cardstock and glued on top of an orange cardstock cut into a semi-circle.

Now please visit the rest of the team to see what magic they have to inspire you with....and don't forget to leave them some loving comments.

Alison Heikkila (our special guest this month)

Laura Drahozal 
Lyn Bernatovich 
Pam Hornschu 
Heidi Erickson 
Louise Healy 
Cyndi Bundy

How To Link With Our Challenges

The Dream Team plays with challenges on a monthly basis, and we would love for you to play along. Confused as to how you would do this? Each Thursday post on the Dream It Up! blog provides a "linkytool" at the bottom of the post. Just click on the section that says, "Click here to enter". This will take you to a separate page provided by linkytools for you to add your info. It will ask for the URL of the project that you'd like to link for the challenge. On your own blog, click on the title of your posted creation. Then copy the URL in the browser bar at the top, and paste that info in the section of the online form asking for that info. The other sections will ask for a title (most just put their first name here), your email, and your name (optional). It will ask if you want to download the picture of your project from the web (i.e. where you posted it), or from your computer. Where you posted it is better, as others can click on it and see the entire picture and read your post. Once this process is finished, you have been entered for the challenge, and you can click on a box that will take you back to the Dream It Up! post, and you can continue viewing the blog. You do NOT have to have a blog to enter. You can provide a URL to an online gallery site with pictures of your creation (Split Coast Stampers, Paper Craft Planet, Photobucket, Flicker, etc.) If you are super tech-shy, you can email pics to lynell@dreamweaverstencils.com, and we'll post them on the blog for others to see. Winners are selected randomly each month, so never feel that your artwork will be judged. 

If you have any other questions regarding the challenges, or techniques that you see on the blog, or techniques that you want to see on the blog...feel free to email Lynell at lynell@dreamweaverstencils.com and/or Pam at phornschu@yahoo.com. Thanks so much for sharing our love of stenciling, and following us on the Dream It Up! blog. Remember to also follow us on Facebook, Pinterest, and Paper Craft Planet for more prizes, challenges, and plenty of fun!