Woodware: A New Nest

Everyone deserves the perfect "nest", the place where all your dreams come true, life lessons are learned, children are raised, grandchildren are spoiled, and two people can grow old together. For those moving into their first, and possibly last, new home, the emotions run rampant. This is the perfect occasion to share your creativity with them. Show them you understand by sending them a beautiful hand-made wish for a happy new home.

I chose to post this card, as it's one of my favorites, and it speaks to that cozy, comfy nest of contentment. The image is the Stampendous Cling Nestled Bird, stamped in black ink on kraft cardstock, and colored with Tombow markers. Bright white highlights were added using a Sakura White Gel Pen, and texture was added using a glue pen to adhere bits of Stampendous Color Fragments in Chiffon, Ochre, Hunter, and Sage Green.

I'd love to hear what you think of as the perfect home in your comments below!

Woodware: What's the POINT, Jane?

This week the Woodware team have been challenged by team member, Jane Gill (the Flower Girl), to create something using the pointillism technique made famous by Seurat.
 I chose to use the new Dreamweaver Fairy for my version. I traced the inside lines with a gray fine-tipped pen, and proceeded to use Sakura Gelly Roll Glaze and Stardust pens to fill in the color and shading with tiny dots. The background was filled in with sponged clouds using a blue dye-based ink and the Dreamweaver Picasso Tool's scalloped edge side. To add to the "fairy in the forest" look, I added a few die cut Dreamweaver Leafy Branches with a few more ink dots.

Be sure to check back through this past week's links at the other interpretations of pointillism on the Woodware blogs.

Woodware: Challenged by Francoisé

Françoise Read loves to play with Sakura pens, and who can blame her? There is a HUGE selection of them available through Woodware. She shared with me a tip about using the Gelly Roll Glaze pens to "watercolor" your images. Just add some of the glaze color, and use a wet paintbrush or Waterbrush to move the ink for shading and dimension. For my card, I did a bit of that with various shades of the Glaze and the Star Pens, to feature the new Dreamweaver Sailing Ship stencil design. I extended out the wave pattern a ways as well. To add some clouds, I used a sponge dauber with some gray ink and created clouds by means of the Dreamweaver Picasso tool. The torn focal panel was matted in red cardstock, and adhered to a textured blue card. More of the blue provided nice contrast for the sailors knot tied in Hemp Cord and wrapped around it. A banner/flag was added with the sentiment from the Perfectly Clear Stampendous Birthday Assortment set.

I'm anxious to see how the rest of the team plays with Françoise challenge...aren't you? Let's check it out on the Woodware blog.

My Bloomin' Bits and Pieces!

The Dream Team is all abloom for the month of March, and who could blame us? Haven't we all seen enough gray, dreary, rainy/snowy days of winter? It's impossible to be depressed when flowers are in abundance, even if it's just a hint sprouting through the snow.

My card today screams warm and tropical sunny days, and was created with leftover bits and pieces from my trip to the UK for the Stitches craft show in Birmingham, England.

Lynell and I were demonstrating stencil techniques, and teaching mini classes in the huge Woodware booth, which also provided the opportunity to play a bit with new or forgotten techniques. Judith had handed us a box of Sakura Cray-Pas...an oily/waxy form of pastels to experiment with. Kind of like crayons for grown-ups. We were creating backgrounds on cardstock by blending various colors of the pastels. Lynell tried to paste-emboss on top of one of these backgrounds, but when she tried to use the Molten Magic technique on it, heating the pasted item just made it want to peel off. In the process, it left a "ghost" image of the design, which was very cool, but kind of a waste of the pasting effort. I played around until I could mimic the ghosting by using a cotton swab with rubbing alcohol to remove color through the Dragonfly stencil design. The result looks very much like batik. To add more interest, I paste-embossed the Daisy Background in Translucent paste over the surface which was very subtle, but you can see in the above pictures how cool it looks.

The Daisy background was also stenciled using the same Cray-Pas over the machine-embossed panel of the Daisies. I rubbed a few colors of the pastel on my Ranger craft mat, and using the Dreamweaver stencil brushes in a rouging manner, applied the color over the surface of the raised design. With the addition of a couple of Prima flowers and a fun new canvas-covered button, my blooming card was complete.

This is the perfect example of why you should always save the bits and pieces that are great on their own, but didn't work for some other project that you were working on. You never know when those pieces will become the jumping off point for a whole new spurt of creativity!

Be sure to visit the rest of the team's blogs for more inspiration, and play along with the team for this month's challenge. Just link your own "bloomin'" creation(s) to the link on the Dream It Up! blog, or email pics of your creations to lynell@dreamweaverstencils.com, for an opportunity to be this month's randomly selected prize winner.

Dream it UP  

Laura Drahozal  

Louise Healy  

Terrece Siddoway 

Georgia Sommers 

Lee Kellogg 

Liz Martin

 Cyndi Bundy 

Cherylynn Moser

Kristi Van Doren

Pam Hornschu (me)

Wendy Jordan