Thursday, March 7, 2013

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.

 


9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cool! The colors are wonderful and I love the ghosting technique. Cray pas, I know I have some in my art chest somewhere.

Lynell Harlow / Dreamweaver Stencils said...

Very cool Pam! Love how all the boo..boos come together and create new techniques. Love ...love ....love your card.

Liz Martin said...

Your card is bright and cheery and makes me want warm, sunny days. As for Cray pas, thanks for the reminder and the inspiration!

Kristi said...

very pretty ...Love the way it went together

Jane Elizabeth Gill said...

Love that orange! So good to have your company at Woodware last month Pam. let me show you round London next time!!!!
Jane xxxx

Laura Drahozal said...

Awesome technique idea--thanks for sharing! I love the orange color you used, too!

Scrappychick said...

This is just awesome! Totally my colors and I LOVE the effect of the Cray-pas! We should add those to the DW lineup :)

Louise said...

This is amazing! Love the techniques and the colors, just beautiful!

Unknown said...

Love this technique. Your card is beautiful!