Thursday, November 29, 2012

The Holidays Clean and Simple AND Elegant...

Guest designer, Deb Frost, is joining us this week from the Woodware Craft Collection team in the UK. Deb is from Exmouth in Devon, which is a seaside town on the south coast of England. She originally had a 30 year career in the beauty industry and has always loved crafting, but became addicted to paper crafting about 8 years ago. She says she is a newbie to stenciling, but after seeing her work on the Woodware blog hop, and other projects as well, I would say her work is a real encouragement to anyone who is beginning the craft of stenciling. Your work is lovely Debbie! If you would like to see more of her stenciling and stamping projects here is a link to her blog: CRAFTY DEBS (and take a moment to leave a comment too).

Her elegant card shown here was created quite simply with the matte black embossing paste (DMBP). Both the tree line stencil (LG745) and the small Celebrate (LS90) were paste-embossed on white card stock. It takes about 25 minutes for this particular paste to dry if applied thin. For a faster dry time set your pieces in an electric skillet on the lowest setting...this would then take only 10 or 15 minutes.

Once the paste was dry she rounded the relevant corners and using a glue pen she added frost to the trees with a chunky crystal glitter. The silver paper was used as an embellishment and she added the wavy crystal strips from Woodware Craft Collection. For information on where to purchase these in the UK visit their SITE for a list of stockists. I love this Clean and Simple AND elegant look you have achieved. Thank you for sharing your beautiful creation with us this week Debbie, and Happy Holidays!

For those of you who are interested in our November challenge of "the Holidays CAS" (clean and simple) just click HERE to find out the details and see what your fellow stencilers have created. We will be posting a winner Saturday, December 1....so create fast and link up soon. For those of you who don't have a site but would like to play along please email your card creation to me at lynell@dreamweaverstencils.com and I will post it for you. We realize that it is the busiest time of year for some of you, but hope you have time to visit the design team listed here to see what they have been creating for our clean and simple team:





Thursday, November 22, 2012

Happy Thanksgiving to All: The Holiday's CAS Challenge

For the month of November our fearless leader Pam has challenged us to do "The Holidays CAS (clean and simple). If you are interested in playing along and winning a stencil of your choice (or our large paste spreader) and a jar of embossing paste (your choice) click HERE to discover the details.

My clean and simple holiday card is one designed by honorary design team member Marj Marion from Olympia, Washington. Marj has been on Sabbatical from designing and teaching for awhile, but I have several of her creations to share with you every now and then....thank you Marj for all the lovely pieces you have sent my way. This card is about as CAS as you'll ever see... and when it comes to the holidays we all know simple cards are at the top of our lists. 

Marj stenciled Santa's cycle onto red card stock using a clear embossing ink and then removed the stencil and sprinkled this ink with white embossing powder and heated it. Hey...Marj...if you're reading this feel free to correct my instructions in the comments section. And for another CAS option which will give you an almost identical effect you can paste-emboss the bike (LJ895) with glossy white embossing paste (DGWP) and merely let it dry. What could be simpler ...except maybe some of the creations you'll see from the other design team members, just follow this list to see what CAS Holiday creations they have come up with...and happy holidays:

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Festively Distressed Week #4 Winner and the Holidays CAS

Ahhhh...tis the season when you often want things to be simple but they often aren't.

This week I am traveling and Pam (our fearless leader) is in the middle of a monstrous move. Wendy Jordan is also busy busy busy so won't be posting this week...of course you realize that is why we have a team, and the rest of us will be doing our postings. Pam was smart enough to give us this Holidays CAS assignment for just this reason. As we move toward the Thanksgiving holiday I want to say it has been a real pleasure to work with such a great group of creative people. And THANKS Pam for all you do...good luck as you go through this moving process. All I can say is...better you than me, you are so organized that I know you will get through this in great form.

My card is one that is created with the berry branches stencil (LJ900) and the Merry Christmas stencil (LS92). It was simply paste-embossed with the glossy black embossing paste (DGKP) on a metallic gold and metallic silver papers. Once it was paste-embossed and still wet a placed the crystals onto the berries using my "GRAB-IT"  (RGGI) tool, which is SIMPLY a long handled cotton swab which is dipped in bee's wax. When you warm the Grab It tool (RGGI) in your hand this makes it easy to pick up the crystals and place them. Now what could be more simple for a holiday card?

Please...if you are interested in joining the Holidays CAS card challenge click HERE to find out the details and link up to mr. linky. Or if you don't have a blog or Flikr account you can email me your card and I will post it here on my blog. lynell@dreamweaverstencils.com 

Last but not least we have our final winner of our Festively Distressed promo with the Ranger/Tim Holtz team! Thank you for the great time we have had using your products.


WINNER OF WEEK #4:

Our winner of Week Four is: Denise Bryant who was randomly chosen from team member Kristi Van Doren's blog and who said, "Beautiful card. Love the gold leafing." Yay Denise...be sure to email me at lynell@dreamweaverstencils.com and send me your snail mail addy and I will send you our week four packet of stencils and distress powders. Thanks everyone for your lovely comments!




Now please join the team for a Thursday's Dream Scheme of The Holidays CAS:




Thursday, November 8, 2012

Week 4 of Festively Distressed with Ranger's Powders + Winner #3




We've now had four weeks of festively distressed fun playing with the Ranger/Tim Holtz Distress Powders along with our wonderful line of Dreamweaver Stencils and products. Huge thanks to Tim Holtz and the fab people at Ranger for sharing these four collaborative weeks with us, and providing the yummy shades of Distress Powders for us to create with. We've been inspired by the process, and we hope you have too! 
If you haven't won one of the prize packages yet, you still have one more opportunity this week as the set below is up for grabs to a random commenter on one of the Dream Team blogs. 

AND OUR WINNER FOR WEEK THREE IS...

Rose S...she was the 7th commentor on the Dream it UP blog and she said, "the cards are beautiful-definitely have to get some distress powders". So Rose....please email me at lynell@dreamweaverstencils.com to claim your prize by sending me your snail mail address and we are hoping when we send it to you...you might even consider playin' along with us on our The Holiday's CAS challenge? Click HERE for that link...and you may even have time to join the Ranger challenge and win 12 distress powders and several more stencils. LOTS to win and so little time, so get with it everybody!

If you've been following along each week, you've seen some gorgeous creations with these stencils and powders, so you should be all fired up to get distressed! If you've missed the first three weeks, check them out once you've made the rounds today:

  

Here is my festively distressed project for this final week 4:

So, what are the steps for this Maidenhair fern stencil (LJ846) design that I did on double sticky paper? If you click HERE you can read through the process on the spider mum stencil (LJ892). Today's creation is the same process except this time around I did not use distress inks to enhance the leaves. The distress powder Pine Needles was sprinkled on the edges of the leaves done in the light green color Peeled Paint and really gave enough contrast so that I didn't need to shade with any inks. The word "PEACE" came from a word stencil that has several sentiments on it (LG696). I paste-embossed it using glossy red embossing paste (DGRP) and sprinkled it with the Fired Brick distress powder so it would have the same distressed look as the rest of the creation. The background was done using the distress powder Old Paper after the stencil was removed from the sticky mounting paper.


Don't forget to leave me some love before hopping to the rest of the Dream Team blogs:

Please remember to continue to follow the team through the Dream It Up! blog as we bravely go where no stenciler has gone before, to like us on our Facebook page, and to learn from our fabulous weekly Thursday Tutorials on Paper Craft Planet as well.

Friday, November 2, 2012

New Challenge for November: The Holidays CAS (Clean and Simple)


The double glitter technique done with Tim Holtz Distress Powders


For the month of November we would like to challenge our blog followers to create for the Holidays in a CAS format. CAS?  Yep it stands for clean and simple! Love that style! We will have a winner for best interpretation of the challenge and one winner for best usage of Dreamweaver products. The prize this month will be your choice of one of our embossing pastes plus your favorite stencil or our paste spreader. Remember if you do not have a blog to showcase your creations just email me and I will post your creation on my blog. lynell@dreamweaverstencils.com

If you do have a blog or flicker please link to mr. linky below.

For the first two weeks of this month we are still blog hopping with Ranger's Tim Holtz Distress Powders and there are prizes to be won both on their blog  and ours. On our blog we are choosing a random winner from the comments on the Dream Team's blogs for each of the next two weeks...prizes are shown on the Novmeber 1st post. On the Ranger blog if you make a creation using the powders and our stencils you could win 12 distress powders and a handful of Dreamweaver Stencils. So why not create for both challenges? Go HERE to read about this opportunity and to link your creation.

To view the winners for October scroll down to the Oct. 31st post. And on the way leave a comment for a possible win on the Tim Holtz Distress Powder promotion.

The Canadian Geese Card:

The card above was created with the double glitter technique, but used Tim Holtz Distress Powders instead of glitter. To find out how to do this step by step click HERE.

The geese (LG687) were done with the color called Old Paper and once the stencil was removed I sprinkled the background sticky paper with Broken China

The clouds were then stenciled using the rounded edge of the Picasso stencil shield (LL332) and Broken China Distress ink using a 1/2 inch stencil brush (NHB-1/2").

The geese stencil (LG687) was then repositioned and the geese were shaded with Black Soot Distress ink. The small white area under their necks was filled in with a white charcoal pencil.

Then I paste-embossed the small thank you (LG691) with Matte Black 
Embossing Paste (DMBP).

We are looking forward to seeing your creations soon!




Thursday, November 1, 2012

Festively Distressed/Week Three and Another Winner!



Still feeling festive? We hope so! Dreamweaver and Ranger still have two weeks left of our Festively Distressed collaboration, and we are full of distressing ideas...Tim Holtz' Distress Powder ideas, that is. Mixed with our fabulous line of metal stencil designs and exciting products, your creativity will know no bounds! If you missed the first two weeks, start HERE and HERE!

For our postings this week and next, we are offering you the opportunity to win one of two prize packages, perfectly coordinated for your holiday crafting. Simply leave a comment on each of our Dream Team's posts, and YOU could be one of two randomly selected winners!

The random winner for last week commented on team member Terrece Siddoway's blog: Her name is Larissa Heskett and she said, "Love this card! The wheat stencil makes me think of our beautiful wheat fields here in Nebraska!!" So Larissa...please email me your snail mail addy and I will send you the packet that was mentioned in last week's posting. My email? lynell@dreamweaverstencils.com


The Dream Team have been challenged for the month of November to create something CAS (clean and simple) for the holidays. The extra challenge is mixing the Distress Powders in for the collaboration with Ranger. Think that it's possible? Well...let's see...

Here's my creation...

Created with Broken China and Black Soot Distress Powders



INSPIRATIONS


I was watching an old game show the other day from the 80s and one of the celebrities was wearing a Christmas sweater that was white with blue poinsettias on it and it was detailed in black. I just couldn't resist. It was a colorway that I had seen on Jill D.'s site recently as well and I just loved it there too. So Jill (if you are reading), today I am CASEing your colorway! I am always amazed where inspiration takes hold in the creative process.


INSTRUCTIONS


The black polka dot background stencil (LJ804) was done like my first posting with the distress powders on a double sticky paper. Click HERE to read the details if you want to give it a try. And then the blue poinsettia stencil (LG700) was paste embossed with Dreamweaver Glossy White Embossing Paste (DGWP) onto black cardstock and when the stencil was removed the paste was immediately sprinkled with Tim Holtz's Broken China Distress Powder while it was still wet. If you want to know more about using the powders on embossing paste click HERE for last Thursday's posting. The last touch was to paste emboss the Season's Greetings stencil (LS91) onto a black tag...again using the Dreamweaver Glossy White Embossing Paste (DGWP). Now embellish with pretty ribbons and crystals in the middle of the poinsettia.

I did not heat emboss distress powders on the background. Reason? It didn't need it for one thing...the sticky paper for the polka dot background process is strong enough to hold the powders. I did heat the poinsettia...why? Because once it was dry I wanted to add some Broken China distress ink for shading, so it is a good idea for the powders to be really embedded into the paste before you reposition the stencil and rub the inks into the powdered poinsettia.


So tell me what you think in your comments below for a chance to win our newest package of stencils and powders before you head over to see what the rest of the team has created:




The Ranger blog is offering another amazing prize opportunity, just for playing along with the Ranger/Tim Holtz Distress Powders and Dreamweaver Stencils and linking your creation on the Ranger blog. You can find more details HERE. (stencils and LOTS of distress powders are mentioned!)



We hope that you have been inspired by our creations, and will continue to follow the Dream Team through the Dream It Up! blog as well as to like us on our Facebook page. We really encourage you to play along with our monthly challenges for more prize opportunities and creative fun!

Our monthly challenge for the month of November is "The HOLIDAYS CAS (Clean & Simple)". My suggestion is that you do both our challenge and Ranger's and have the opportunity to win double! For those of you that have been playing along regularly you have a great advantage...and this month we are putting together two more of the packages above for two more winners at the end of the month. Come back tomorrow (November 2nd) and read the details for November's monthly challenge.