Making Texture Blog Hop Day 3!

We have a different sort of collaboration for you!

At Stampendous we’re very excited to be able to offer our products in many countries around the world. We’re able to do this thanks to our terrific distributors in those countries who help retail stores to stock our products. In the UK we have a very long and valued partnership with Woodware Craft Collection. These wonderful folks stock almost all of our products, and they even stock several classic items that have retired from our store here in the US. They also stock almost all of our new Dreamweaver Stencils line, so we thought it would be another great event to celebrate the addition of Dreamweaver to the Stampendousfamily.

This week we’re going to celebrate with the awesome Woodware Design Team and the Dreamweaver Stencils Dream Team all of the the great Stampendous and Dreamweaver Stencils products thatWoodware makes available to the UK market. This is good news for our crafty friends in the UK because we’ll be offering prizes and our UK friends are eligible to win!! We’ll be offering three prizes in the UK and three in the US. Each prize package will consist of  Nathalie Kalbach’s terrific Grunge Mixed Media Cling Rubber Stamp Sets and the beautiful Zen Butterfly Dreamweaver Stencil! Both products are ideal for adding texture and backgrounds to your projects!

And that’s our theme!! Making Texture. Here's what I "texturized" today:

• Use the Creative Palette from Stampendous (I have the Rectangles one) to add layers of acrylic paint with a brayer
• Add designs with stamps or stencils
• Press a piece of Stampendous Mixed Media White Paper over the paint and rub gently
• Add another layer of paint to the palette
• Use a stencil or stamp to press into the design and "lift off" some color and create a design. I used LX7024  Zen Flower to create a design
• Press your paper again
• Keep playing until it looks awesome!
• It did several pieces because it's highly addictive!
• On one background, I laid the Zen Flower stencil and pasted with Dreamweaver Translucent Embossing Paste, removed the stencil and placed it in water for cleaning later
• While the paste was still wet, I sprinkled it with a combination of Stampendous aged silver embossing enamel and a little Jeweled gold, let the paste dry, then heated the powders (although I think it would have been neat to heat right away too and have gotten more of the Molten Magic look for even more texture!)
• I took a left over scrap of background paper and laid the Zen Flower on it and outlined the center openings with a Black Micro 02 pen
• Cut out the to flowers, adhere them to yellow cardstock and recut around the edges
• Layer into a beautiful card, embellished with some May Arts Ribbon

We hope you’ll enjoy the wonderful inspiration that three talented teams will bring you this week! Be sure to visit all the blog links listed and leave your comments! Each comment will count as an entry towards one of the terrific prize packages.

Stampendous Blog

Amy Hurley-Purdie

Jamie Martin

Asia King

Wendy Price

Woodware Craft Collection Blog

Pam Hornschu

Dreamweaver Stencils Blog

Cindy Groh

Louise Healy (you're here)

Happy Creating,
Louise

March Madness Week 1!

MAD I tell you! We're all going MAD! That is...MAD for Dreamweaver Stencils! Lol. Welcome to our "March Madness" challenge! Anything goes, and the more outside-of-the-box, the better. This year, we're aiming to play with non-traditional challenges whenever possible. So, break out all of your I-never-quite-knew-what-to-do-with-these-products stash, look at your Dreamweaver stencils in a whole new creative light, and get crafting! Oh, and don't forget to link those creations to the linkytool on the Dream It Up! blog for one of THREE chances to win the stencil of your choice!
Ever since its release in January, I have been "mad" for the new Zen Flower stencils (LX7024). It is a very large stencil (6"x6") so using all of it can be a challenge, but it is so beautiful that you want to use it every way you can think of when you're creating! I have been wanting to create a layered version of this flower and just had not found the time, until now. Mirror projects are one of my favorite "non-traditional" go to projects, so this week I created one using this wonderful new stencil and the three new leaf die cuts (DD003 Leafy Branch, DD002 Monstera leaf, and DM2001 Petite fern).

Here's my personal act of madness:

Start by tracing the Zen flower stencil on patterned paper with a Micron pen,
repeat the tracing using less and less of the stencil each time until you have several layers

Cut the layers out and use a coordinating ink to add a deeper color to every other layer

Edge each layer with a black marker and use foam tape between the layers
Make several flowers in various sizes.

Die cut the three different leaves in various shades of green

I painted a square mirror from IKEA with several colors of Distress Paint and let that dry
before adding my layered flowers and the die cut leaves.

I haven't decided yet if I'm going to use a ribbon to hang it with or just the hanger it comes with, so for now it doesn't have either, and is sitting on an easel (that's good too). The photos really can't do it justice. It has such depth and texture in person, you'll just have to take my word for for it! By the way, I was able to create all the flowers for this out of ONE 12" x 12" piece of decorative paper with enough left over to make one more small flower. That's MADNESS! what an easy, fun, beautiful way to use up a piece of left over paper! Oh, I almost forgot, I put it all together with ZipDry from Beacon Adhesives. 

Need some more crazy ideas? Check our "A" team, and our very special guest designer and Certified Dreamweaver teacher...

Georgia Sommers

Dream It Up!
Laura Drahozal
Lyn Bernatovich
Pam Hornschu
Heidi Erickson
Louise Healy 
Cyndi Bundy

Happy Creating,

Louise