Dream Scheme Sketch Week

This is the sketch for the week. I followed it very closely, and used three different techniques: paste, metals and shrink plastic.
The paste technique was pretty straightforward. It is done with the original paste. I used LL 403 Live, Laugh, Love. This stencil is actually a small set of three stencils in a ovals. I knew that I wanted to use the oval to follow the sketch. Due to the casual nature of the card, I made the decision that I wanted the paste to lap over the outside of the oval. Using the regular taping method, it would be impossible to get that paste to completely surround the oval, being that there would be tape blocking it. I tried something new for me and attached the stencil with double sided adhesive tape. I would NOT recommend this technique for everyday use. It has a high probablity of damaging your stencil. I only tried it here because it was a smaller stencil that had very small openings compared to the amount of the metal. I was very careful to remove the paper from the stencil, instead of pulling the stencil off of the paper. I suspect that I was also a little lucky not to have bent the stencil.
For the metal portion, I used the Beach Chair Stencil LL 329. The metal is actually aluminum covered with a copper color. I used Mercart Metals basic tools to push the metal through the stencil. I just love using metals and now that I have some tools, it is so easy. It is sort of like traditional embossing. Anyway, I purposely added some lines inside the chair, as you can see here, so that it would look more like wood grain. In the upper corner of this photo, you can see that the metal work on the umbrella is much smoother. After the embossing was done, I sanded the metal to expose the aluminum color underneath.

When I attached this metal, I wanted to use some sort of non-adhesive connection to back up the typical adhesion, as metal is heavy. This is why I used my Big Bite to add holes and some Scrappers' Floss.

My last technique on this card is the use of Shrink Plastic. For this card, I used clear plastic. I scruffed it up with my sanding block before adding the stencils. I then used Adirondack Pigment Ink in Snow Cap all over the plastic that I was using for the shell (stencil LM 267) and sand dollar (stencil LR 12). I used Distress Ink in Tea Dye behind the Starfish LM 209.

I then used both Distress Inks (Worn Lipstick, Walnut Stain, Weathered Wood) and Adirondack Pigment Inks (Mushroom, Snow Cap) with small stencil brushes to stencil in all the colors. I removed the stencils and cut around the images. I added the holes with the large setting of my Big Bite. You have to use the large setting, as the smaller holes would completely disappear when you heated them. Then, I used my Ranger Heat It tool to "shrink" the images. I attached them with scrappers' floss.

The paper that I used was by Creative Imaginations. I was pretty happy with my results on this one. Although I sort of dreaded this sketch initially because of all of the activity on it, I really enjoyed it once I started working on it. You should give this sketch a try, too. Once you do, be sure to link it (or email the image) to the Dreamweaver Stencil blog. Maybe you will see your project highlighted in future weeks. Meanwhile, check out all the variations of this sketch on the blogs of my fellow teammates (listed on the left side of this page.) Leave some comments if you can (we all like comments). Get inspired and inspire others. Oh--and check back next week for a reveal of two of the brand new stencils!