Marching Into Spring

Ready for fresh air, sunshine, new leaves, and flowers blooming? Well, the Dream Team is right there with you! Our challenge for the month of March is...coincidentally...Marching into Spring. Per usual, we'd love to have you play along with us, and link your own creations to the Inlinkz tool on the Dream It Up! blog, or at the bottom of this post. Play as many times as you'd like. Those of you who work Dreamweaver and/or Stampendous products into your projects receive bonus points, but everyone has an opportunity to be the winner who receives the stencil of their choice.

Here's my hint of Spring:

 I have decided to present one of my favorite stencils, LL 3001 Long Thistle, in two different ways.  You might notice that the colors are almost the same--I just love purple and green together!
The top card features the stencil pasted with Glossy Green Embossing Paste on linen material.  Sometimes, when I paste on linen, I get small imperfections like the ones on the upper left side of the image.  I don't mind them, though, because they add to the organic feel of the image.  When the paste was dry, I replaced the stencil and brushed on a little glue with my stencil brush.  After the glue was slightly dry, but tacky to the touch, I sprinkled on Metallic FX in Kiwi, Ivy Garden, and Purple Satin.  I could have just as easily sprinkled the Metallic FX on the paste while it was wet, but I felt that applying glue later allowed me a little more control.

For my second card, I used the stencil through my Cuttlebug with green coated aluminum.  The "sandwich" that I used was A plate, stencil face down, metal face down, Stamping Details Rubber Embossing Mat, and two B plates.  I removed the metal and placed it face down on a piece of suede.  I further embossed the image manually with the tools in my Beginner Metal Kit.  Specifically, the Teflon Tool and the Ball Tool.  Then, I flipped the metal right side up on a smooth, hard surface and used the "deerfoot" side of the Teflon Tool to sharpen the details around the image.  At this point, I could have filled the back of the image with filler paste, but I chose not to on this one.  I did put it face up on the Herringbone Stencil LJ 914 and used a blending stump to create the light texture in the background.  I then gently sanded that area.  Finally, I used Color Solutions Alcohol Ink Thinner on a QTip to remove the green on the flower.  I replaced it with Color Solutions Alcohol Ink in Thistle and Sugar Plum to add in the purple color.

Thanks for stopping by to see my post.

The "A" team would love to share their interpretations of this theme:

Dream It Up!

Leadonna Kimmel

Louise Healy

Laura Drahozal

Lynn Mercurio

Pam Hornschu

Jamie Martin

An InLinkz Link-up