This Week's Tiny Treat is All WET!

Pam here today, as Lynell is in wildly busy mode right now...again! She's been prepping madly for our new Dreamweaver Stencils' Teacher Certification program, which at the time that you're reading this, is taking place! If you're interested in future certification classes, or in hiring our certified teachers to come teach in your area, please email lynell@dreamweaverstencils.com or Louise Healy at louisehealy@sbcglobal.net for more info.

If you remember (and how could you not?), all of the month of May we have been playing with the challenge of "Tiny Treats"...those little somethings for the someones in our lives that show we care. I created this darling little pail with some bath gel and a squishy-pouf (technical term) for someone who deserves just a little extra pampering in their life. The feature of my gifty is the brand new Rubber Ducky stencil, which I simply ink stenciled with VersaColor Lime and Cyan inks on the die cut tag, and several times on a piece of white tissue paper. These were torn out and decoupaged onto the pail (Dollar Spot at Target!) with my favorite decoupage medium...Beacon Adhesives' Fast Finish. It is clear, and slightly thin, and easily brushed on both under and over the tissue pieces. Once dry, I brushed the Fast Finish over the entire pail and covered it with Stampendous Multi Crystal Ultra Fine Glitter...nice and sparkly, but transparent enough to see the duckies! I stenciled a die cut fancy label using the Dreamweaver Calligraphy Alphabet with Versamark ink, and embossed with Stampendous White Embossing Powder. The goodies were tucked into the pail, the whole thing into a clear gift bag, and the finishing touch...a perfectly color matched plaid ribbon from May Arts! You'll be seeing plenty of May Arts wonderful product line over the next year as we are working as Partners in Craft with them. Be sure to visit their blog as well for some peeks at more fun projects with Dreamweaver and May Arts.

Here's your opportunity to visit the rest of the Dream Team (B team) for more Tiny Treats. We'd love it if you'd play along with the challenge and link your creation to the linkytool on our blog, or email pics to lynell@dreamweaverstencils.com. Not only do you have an opportunity to win a great stencil prize (selected randomly), but also the chance to have your creation featured on the Dream It Up! blog and our Facebook page! If you haven't already liked us on Facebook, be sure to do so! Our Fan Family have so much fun sharing creations, playing trivia games and going on treasure hunts for prizes. Come join the fun!

Dream It Up!
Louise Healy

Stacey Rumsby
Terrece Siddoway
Caroline Duncan
Pam Hornschu
Cherylynn Moser

 

Treats in Miniature for the Month of May!

HEY...HEY...HEY...It's a beautiful day! Today I had the joy of playing with my great niece, Matilda. She helped me stage this miniature quilt made by my friend Barbara Alama from Honolulu HI. (Thank you for this beautiful quilt Barbara!) Matilda and I have been having a lot of fun with it. Matilda's idea was to make the quilt look like a towel at the beach for our photo shoot with this "tiny" doll! Makes me realize that summer is just around the corner.

 For the month of May, the Dream Team is fixated on "Tiny Treats"...party favors, wedding favors, end of school year treats, teacher appreciation gifts, baby shower favors, co-worker treats, in other words...small tokens of appreciation for those you care about.

Hawaiian quilt stencil (LG662) Dreamweaver Stencils

Barbara Alama does a lot of her stenciled quiltwork with Artist's Paintstiks, which are an oil based product. One of her tips is that she puts a fine grit sandpaper under the fabric when she stencils. This keeps the fabric from moving around as she stencils with a stencil brush using a stippling or rouging motion through the stencil. To make the stenciled quilt blocks washable she heat sets them with a dry iron. This means that after the stenciling is done she waits a few days to let the paint dry or "cure" and then places the stenciled fabric onto an ironing board and positions a paper towel over these quilt blocks. Next she presses the dry iron on top of the paper towel. The iron is on a "wool" setting ...so it's quite hot. If you are crafting with the kids this is a step you may want to reserve for yourself. Stenciling on fabric is a fun thing to do and you can even make your fabric creations into greeting cards too!

Now don't forget to visit the Dream Team's blogs to see what they have been doing for Tiny Treats this month. And HEY....yes I'm talking to YOU! Feel free to join us this month. Any creation will work as a tiny treat...our winner is going to be picked randomly, so you don't have to worry about what you should create...we want to make this easy for YOU! If you have a blog, please post your thumbnail "photo" below using the linky tool and if you don't have a blog email me your creation and I will post it for you. I won't be home for a few days, but I promise I will post it before the end of the month. Our entire team is listed on the sidebar, but only these ladies are posting this week. Many of the team design for other companies, so be sure to keep up with what they are doing.

Laura Drahozal
Lyn Bernatovich
Pam Hornschu 
Heidi Erickson
Louise Healy

Cyndi Bundy

Jessica Griffin

May's Tiny Treats: Kristi Has This One All Wrapped Up!

 For the month of May, the Dream Team is fixated on "Tiny Treats"...party favors, wedding favors, end of school year treats, teacher appreciation gifts, baby shower favors, co-worker treats, in other words...small tokens of appreciation for those you care about.

This beautiful necklace was made by Kristi Van Doren. Kristi is the head of the Art Institute Glitter design team and has made several pieces of jewelry as samples for me over the years using Dreamweaver Stencils and the embossing paste. This particular base is a clear slice of agate. The stencil design Kristi paste-embossed with silver embossing paste (DSP) is an ethnic mask (LL538). While the embossing paste was still wet Kristi held the piece at an angle and sprinkled different colors of glitter one at a time so they didn't mix into one another. Once dry she framed it with the metal wire and hung it on a chain. Jewelry is one gift that is always fun to give and this time of year there are loads of opportunities. Hopefully you will join the team and challenge and post your creations HERE. If you don't have a blog please feel free to email me a photo of your work and I will post it on my blog for you.

Hope you take a few minutes from your day and visit the team to view their "tiny treats" creations this week. We love to have your comments too!

Pam Hornschu

Lea Kimmel

Louise Healy

Stacey Rumsby

Terrece Siddoway

Caroline Duncan

Cherylynn Moser

Making the Month of May Merrier with Tiny Treats!

 For the month of May, the Dream Team is fixated on "Tiny Treats"...party favors, wedding favors, end of school year treats, teacher appreciation gifts, baby shower favors, co-worker treats, in other words...small tokens of appreciation for those you care about.  I told our fearless leader (Pam) that perhaps I would use a "tiny" bow on my card and I got the stink eye for even thinking such a thing. LOL!!! 

So since I am doing this at the last minute (as per usual), I am presenting a beautiful creation that I have blogged about in the past. It is a business card holder that can be worn as a necklace. This beautiful embossed metal and paper purse was a gift to me from Kathi Anderson. She embossed it on pewter metal from MercartUSA. Kathi travels, teaches, and is a sales rep for Dreamweaver Stencils in the states of New Mexico and Missouri. She used the Black Eyed Susan stencil with the flourishing vines and leaves (LJ902). Although the pewter is somewhat pricey, Kathi says that she is able to put the metal with the stencil through the Big Shot embossing machine. Then she adds more detail work with specialty tools made for embossing metal.

Hope you will have fun planning a "Tiny Treat" for our Month of May challenge. Leave your thumbnail on the linking system below and this month you could win any one item sold by Dreamweaver Stencils. Yep, it's a tricky challenge but the rewards are great. If you don't have your own blog email me a picture of your creation at lynell@dreamweaverstencils.com, and I will blog about it for you. Our random winner will be chosen at the end of the month and posted on the first. Am excited to see what you come up with. For even more details visit the blogs of our design team listed below. Half of them post the first week and the second half of them will post the following week.

Laura Drahozal
Lyn Bernatovich
Pam Hornschu
Heidi Erickson
Louise Healy

Cyndi Bundy

MAY 1, 2013/ We Have a Winner!

LJ908 umbrella background stencil by Miriam P.

Hello! We have a random winner for our April challenge. Miriam you are our winner! Which means you need to email me your choice for a free Dreamweaver Stencil. Yep, any stencil of choice. Thank you for playing along with our Drizzle, Mists and Showers challenge. email me at:  lynell@dreamweaverstencils.com

Tomorrow we are starting a new challenge, be sure to come by and see what the Dream it Up team has created. The title of the challenge is "Tiny Treats"....hmmm....what could that be referring to?

Well, Pam Hornschu, our fearless leader has it all mapped out for you. Thanks so much for playing along ...I love to see where the challenge takes people.

This month our random winner will be able to choose any one product that Dreamweaver sells. So stay tuned.

Thursday's Dream Schemes/Clouds, Mists and Showers Challenge

Hey everyone! It's another Thursday to celebrate our monthly challenge of Clouds, Mists and Showers. And this Thursday I am sharing two of our new stencil designs. Mother's Day and Father's Day will be here before you know it and I think these two foxy foxes could be designed into cards for those holidays. I am kind of jumping the gun though because our retailers might not have these on their shelves quite yet, so give them another week before you insist you have to have them. lol!

You could win one of these new designs by joining our monthly challenge and becoming one of our random winners. So join us and throw your hat into the ring...or name into the hat. If you have a creation click HERE and link up for the challenge. If you don't have a blog just email me one of your creations at lynell@dreamweaverstencils.com. Many of you have done this and I love seeing what you are creating.

Today I again used the Memories Mists to stencil a spray collage. This line of sprays is one of my favorites because if you are spraying onto non-glossy card stock it dries to the touch almost immediately. But the spray beads up on the stencil and stays wet for awhile so I can have a wet medium to stencil detail onto the edges of the design. If you want small droplets of spray for your work hold the bottle 18-24 inches above the card and spritz by pushing the atomizer down firmly. If you want large droplets, hold the bottle closer to the card stock and gently push the atomizer half way down. 

First I sprayed the entire card with Mango Lemonade (MM01) to achieve a light yellow background. Next I placed the smaller Fox stencil (LM2016) into the lower right corner and sprayed with Iced Coffee (MM24) and then just a small amount of Amaretto (MM06). I used a small Dreamweaver Stencils Gold Handled stencil brush (GHB) and with the wet stencil still in place I stenciled by pulling the wet ink off the edges of the stencil and moved it onto the tips of his tail, ears, chests and feet. Then I removed the stencil and layered the Large Fox stencil (LL3030) onto the smaller stenciled fox and repeated the process with the same two spray colors.  I took a slightly larger brush (NHB 3/8") and stenciled off the edges of each of the stencils with a black pigment ink to frame the foxes. Even though the spray ink is dry to the touch immediately the moisture has absorbed into the card stock, so I let it dry just a bit before paste-embossing the YOU & ME stencil (LS1004) using the Dreamweaver Matte Black Embossing Paste (DMKP). The matte black usually dries more quickly than the glossy pastes, but considering the wet paper I place the stencil onto a warming pan or electric pancake griddle to dry it more quickly. A low setting is all that is needed to hasten the drying time. Once dry I mounted it onto black card stock and they are ready to be sent.

I hope you'll have time to visit our design team's creations this week, just follow the list at the bottom of my blog. We have a special guest designer Alison Heikkila joining us each week in April. She always amazes me with how she thinks outside the box. Thanks so much, Alison, for consenting to play along with us this month! 

Pam Hornschu

Lea Kimmel

Alison Heikkila

Louise Healy

Stacey Rumsby

Terrece Siddoway

Caroline Duncan

Cherylynn Moser

Clouds, Showers and Mists: Thursday's Dream Challenge

LG642 leaves and LM210 friends

Our challenge this month is Clouds, Showers and Mists. Today I am using the Memories Mist sprays. I began by spraying the cardstock first with an allover misting of the Wheatgrass (MM05) and a very light mist of Strawberry Daiquiri (MM08). Next I used the letterpress technique with my Big Shot embossing machine and instead of spraying the cardstock I sprayed the leaves stencil (LG642) itself. This time I used a turquoise mist called Blue Martini (MM21). I then placed the inked stencil on a piece of scrap paper (which I had positioned on the thick white plate of my machine) inked side facing up. Then I followed the stacking method for letterpress through the machine. Cardstock on top of the inked stencil, next the thick rubber mat by Stamping Details (REM), and last add the two acrylic mats that come with the machine. Crank it through the embossing machine, but don't force it. You want this to go through with firm pressure. If it goes through easily you may need to add another piece of cardstock as a shim on top of the rubber mat.

Next I stenciled the leaves (LG642) in a random manner surrounding the embossed leaves using green pigment ink . Then I paste embossed the Friends stencil (LM210) using the matte yellow embossing paste (DMYP).

Showers Challenge card by Rose S.

I would also like to share a card today from Rose S. She too, created a background for her design, but she used alcohol inks. Her umbrella stencil (LG737) and showers of blessing sentiment (LG738) were done with the regular white matte embossing paste (DEP) and then she stenciled it with yellow pigment ink. Thanks Rose for joining our challenge! 

So if you have your own blog or Flickr account and would like to join our challenge click HERE or scroll down to my first post of the month and add your design to our linking device at the bottom of the post. If you don't have your own blog but want to join our challenge, just send me a picture and I will happily post it here for you like I did Roses' cards. lynell@dreamweaverstencils.com You could be one of our random winners! We love to know that you are out there creating and this is a way we can say thanks for joining us in our creative endeavors.

Please take a few minutes to enjoy our design team's creations. This month we have a special guest designer...Alison Heikkila! YAY! Thanks for joining us Alison.

Dream It Up!
Alison Heikkila
Laura Drahozal
Lyn Bernatovich
Pam Hornschu
Heidi Erickson
Louise Healy

Cyndi Bundy

Jessica Griffin