Thursday, April 16, 2015

Showers of showers: Week #3

For the month of April, the Dream Team are featuring "Showers of Showers" as our theme. As usual, we'd love for you to play along. Just link your creation on the Dream It Up! blog for a chance to win the stencil of your choice...bonus chances for incorporating Dreamweaver and/or Stampendous in your design. Here's what I'm showering you with this week... LOOK closely for the raindrops (translucent embossing paste on acetate....see how)


We were in Oregon last week and the pink dogwoods were in full bloom! Wow! (I really enjoyed the cooler weather, because here in Southern California we have had more than our fair share of heat this spring.) Here is a picture we took while in Oregon...and it was such a beautiful tree. It inspired me to use the dogwood stencil (LG668) seen above. To give it a springtime shower effect the raindrop stencil (LJ905) was used on acetate. Well, I'm getting ahead of myself, first the dogwood stencil design was used through an embossing machine... using the letterpress technique. With this particular technique you spray the stencil with ink and then place your card stock on top of the wet ink and run it through the embossing machine. The stacking method for my big shot or cuttlebug is: thick white plate, wet stencil, card stock, thick rubber mat (REM), two acrylic plates (if it's the cuttlebug machine that you have...this means use the two "B" plates). This made the blue speckled background behind the dogwoods (the Blue Lagoon color of the Memories Mist spray MM120 was used) and of course the flowers were the white from the embossed paper. The paper is dry immediately so you can reposition the stencil on the flowers and use a variety of pigment inks and small stencil brushes.




Because I wanted the raindrops to be clear and show up on the embossed and stenciled image of the dogwood flowers I paste-embossed a piece of clear acetate with the Translucent embossing paste (DEPT). On the left is the acetate with the translucent paste and the raindrop stencil on the right. The translucent embossing paste appears white when you first use it, but it dries clear like you see on the card that is finished...shown above. After it dried I turned it over and paste embossed the sentiment "when it rains it pours" stencil (LG738) on the side without the embossed rain, this way I had a smooth surface to paste-emboss.  



For the sentiment I used gold embossing paste (DGP). AND because it didn't POP quite as much as I wanted, I traced just a bit of a shadow with a black micron pen under the letters. It's hard to see the effect of the letters on the "rain spattered" acetate, but it really is a fun technique to be able to have the paste embossed sentiment on top of the clear raindrops which is really on the other side of the acetate. Looking forward to seeing how you might translate the challenge this month. And in the meantime please take time to let our Dream it UP team know that you are loving their creations. 

Here's the links for the "A" team that is posting this week:

Dream It Up! (you're here)


8 comments:

ionabunny said...

That's a very interesting effect. Obviously I need to get some of this clear embossing paste. I love the way the words pop. I thought maybe you a had used black paste and then bumped the stencil and applied the gold. So glad it was easier than that!! Thanks for sharing. Hugz

Dee said...

The raindrops really make the beautiful dogwoods pop!

Viki Banaszak said...

This is an awesome card! I love the pink dogwoods. So pretty. Thanks for the inspiration pictures too.

Jan Castle said...

LOVE the look....will be trying this for sure. Happy you enjoyed OREGON!!! I live in Salem and everywhere I go, I am snapping pictures of the beautiful Spring flowers....yesterday it was the pink dogwood tree and the purple azaleas,
Your card is beautiful!!!!!! TFS
Jan

Christine Kiehl said...

Love it! Nicely done! Those raindrops are a must have!

barbara macaskill said...

So pretty! Must get my hands on the raindrops stencil! I love creating rainy day scenes and this is a must get! TFS!

Pam Hornschu said...

Thanks for sharing all the details on this, Lynell. Love the translucent paste with the rain!

Louise said...

This is beautiful Lynell! Love the picture from your trip too!

Post a Comment

Blog Archive