Technique of the Week: The Joy of Dylusions

This technique features Dylusions paint, the fabulous fluid acrylic paint by Dyan Reaveley. Dylusions paints are available in 24 vibrant colors. The Dylusions paints were formulated by Dyan Reaveley for Ranger, to be especially ideal for use in Journals. The colors are amazing, and they dry quickly. Conveniently, this also makes them ideal for card making.

Here's my card, and it came together so quickly!

Dyan Reaveley has a number of videos online where she demos her products, including this paint, so if you have not already seen her videos, be sure to check them out. She has a number of products in her Dylusions line, and you can see many of her videos here including the ones using her paints.

Also featured on this card are a stamp and a stencil from Magenta's newest fall and winter collection. I used the new Magenta stencil, Graphic Poinsettia TM195, and a new Magenta stamp, Joy to the World 07.958.H. I also used Dylusions paint colors Cherry Pie and White Linen.

One of my favorite techniques that Dyan does with her paints is that she often uses a baby wipe to apply it, and I used that technique here. For this card, I cut a panel to 3.75" x 5" out of heavy weight Strathmore Bristol paper. If you don't have Bristol, you can also use heavy weight white Neenah Solar White cardstock, or watercolor cardstock. The Bristol is nice because it's very smooth and accepts the paint well. To cut my panel, I used the largest die in the Lawn Fawn Small Stitched Rectangle Stackables set LF768.

I started with Dylusions Cherry Pie paint and using a baby wipe I applied color all over the panel. One tip is that before you open the paint, tip it upside down. This puts paint on the inside of the lid, and you can dip your baby wipe in the lid instead of dipping it into the jar of paint. Also, so that my baby wipe would not be too wet, before dipping into the paint, I squeezed it out over a paper towel to get some of the moisture out. 

This paint dries very quickly, but once I had applied color to the entire panel, I hit it with a heat gun for a short time to be sure.

After sticking the panel down to my craft mat, I laid the stencil onto it and arranged it so that there would be room for a sentiment. I taped the stencil down with painter's tape.

At this point I switched to a small blending tool that has a foam pad (Ranger mini Distress blending tool), and opened the White Linen paint. I dipped the blending tool into the paint in the lid, and rubbed it into a circle on my craft mat to work the paint into the sponge. I applied the paint through the stencil openings with the blending tool.

Once I was satisfied with the coverage, I removed the stencil and I really liked the result. One tip I have is that the second color needs to be enough of a contrast to show up.

I stamped the Magenta Joy to the World stamp in Versamark ink and embossed with White Diamond embossing powder. White dots were added to the center of the Poinsettia using Imagine Crafts Pico embellisher in Wedding Dress. I also went over all of the Poinsettia petals with a clear Wink of Stella pen to add a little sparkle, and scattered some sequins, gluing them down with Ranger Multi Medium Matte.

To put the card together, I adhered a piece of green cardstock (4" x 5.25") to a white base card (4.25" x 5.5" Neenah Solar White 110# cardstock). I decided to pop the red panel up off of the green mat, so I cut a piece of white fun foam just a little smaller than the red panel. 

Since I didn't want the white foam to show from the sides, I took a dark green Copic marker, and colored the sides of the foam before gluing it down. I adhered the foam to the red panel, and then adhered it to the green mat and base card using scor tape. 

It's very hard to see anything under the red panel with the edges of the foam painted with the dark color.

I love how this card turned out, and hope you will give this technique a try. There are 26 lovely colors of Dylusions paints, and you can use them to make a quick and easy card for almost any occasion.

Please check out my blog post that went live last night with a card that is on the Magenta blog today, featuring one of the new Magenta stamps here.

Magenta Products Used:

(If you are local, please look for products at Art 'n Soul. If you are not local and wish to find Magenta products, you can click on the link in the stamp or product name below each image, or you can visit the Magenta online store here).

TM195 Graphic Poinsettia

07.958.H Joy to the world

Other Products used:

Dylusions paint: Cherry Pie, White Linen

Lawn Fawn LF768 Small Stitched Rectangle Stackables

Kirkland Baby Wipes

Strathmore Bristol heavyweight paper

JudiKins White Diamond embossing powder

Versamark ink

Irresistible Pico Embellisher, Wedding Dress

Distress mini blending tool

Fun (craft) foam

Scor tape

Various sequins

Ranger Multi Medium Matte

Chinese Lantern Happy Birthday

This is a beautiful stamp by Magenta DT member Carole Dion! I absolutely could not wait to play with this one. This card is featured on the Magenta blog today.

I cut a small and large panel out of Tim Holtz watercolor cardstock. I like this particular watercolor paper because it's white. For the larger panel I used the largest die in the Lawn Fawn LF768 Small Stitched Rectangle Stackables. For the smaller panel I used Die-namics MFT-470 Horizontal Stitched Strips. 

I stamped the gorgeous Chinese Lantern image on the small panel and the larger panel with Versafine Vintage Sepia ink. I was able to stamp them in exactly the same place by using the MISTI stamping tool.

I tapped Nuance colors into a palette and added a few drops of water mixed with Perfect Pearls powder for some shine, and started painting. This image was just a joy to paint. I painted just the edges of the image under the small panel.

I colored around the painted image with a Copic C1 marker for shading.

This Happy Birthday sentiment is one of my favorite Magenta Happy Birthday stamps. The font is beautiful and it fits perfectly on a card. I stamped it with Versafine Vintage Sepia ink. Both the small and larger panel were matted with Stardream Bronze cardstock.

I applied some sequins for bling using Ranger Multi Medium Matte adhesive.

Magenta Products Used

(If you are local, please look for products at Art 'n Soul. If you are not local and wish to find Magenta products, you can click on the link in the stamp or product name below each image, or you can visit the Magenta online store here).

84.014.N Chinese Lantern

07.430.I Happy Birthday

MNU002 Bright Yellow

MNU006 Orange

MNU008 Golden Yellow

MNU009 Grass Green

MNU022 Nutmeg

Other Products Used:

Versafine Vintage Sepia ink

Lawn Fawn LF768 Small Stitched Rectangle Stackables

Die-namics MFT-470 Horizontal Stitched Strips

Copic marker C1

Bronze Stardream paper

Tim Holtz watercolor paper

various sequins

Ranger Multi Medium Matte adhesive

Technique of the Week: Distress Crayon Resist

This post is in conjunction with the Art 'n Soul Newsletter Technique of the Week.

One of the interesting things about Distress Crayons is that they act as a resist. To explore this technique, I used one of the newest stencils from Magenta (coming soon!). You need a stencil that has decent sized openings for this to work well. This leaf stencil was designed by one of the Magenta Design Team members, the very talented Carole Dion. It's absolutely beautiful, and perfect for this technique.

First I cut a panel out of Neenah Solar White 80# cardstock to 3.75" x 5" (using the largest rectangle in the Lawn Fawn die set LF768 Small Stitched Rectangle Stackables).

I taped the Magenta leaf stencil (TM190) to the panel and using the Picket Fence (white) Distress crayon, I colored into all of the openings and smudged it with my finger until I was satisfied that it had covered the whole opening.

Magenta Stencil TM190 Designed by Carole Dion - Isn't it beautiful?

Once I had applied the white Distress Crayon into all of the leaf openings, I dried the panel with a heat gun. The resist properties of the Distress Crayons work best if the crayon has dried.

Next I started blending Distress Inks over the design. I began with Mustard Seed, and continued with Wild Honey; Spiced Marmalade; Rusty Hinge; and finally with Barn Door. As the color on the panel got progressively darker, the image showed up more and more.

Step 1 - Mustard Seed

Step 2 - Wild Honey

Step 3 - Spiced Marmalade. The image is really beginning to pop

Step 5 - Rusty Hinge

Step 6 - Barn Door

I wanted a little bling, so I went over each part of the stenciled image with a clear Wink of Stella glitter pen. This lightened the image even further, and added a beautiful sparkle that is impossible to capture in a photograph.

I stamped the Thinking of You sentiment with Versafine Vintage Sepia ink and embossed it with clear embossing powder. I sprinkled droplets of water over the image to add interest. It was at this point that all was almost lost, since I dropped two very large splats of water onto the panel by mistake. Since it was 1:00 a.m. by this time, I covered the offending splats with large sequins. This is always an option! In the photo below I also show how I'm choosing a sentiment that will fit in the space.

The panel was mounted onto a mat of Stardream Bronze cardstock cut to 4" x 5.25" and all was mounted onto a base card of Neenah Solar White 110# cardstock.

This is a fun technique that you can try with Distress Crayons, and is one of the many ways to use them.  You can go here to a previous posting to see another technique using Distress Crayons.

Magenta Products Used:

(If you are local, please look for products at Art 'n Soul. If you are not local and wish to find Magenta products, you can click on the link in the stamp name below each image, or you can visit the Magenta online store here).

Magenta Leaf Stencil TM190 (available soon)

07.869.D Thinking of You

Other Products Used:

Distress Crayon: Picket Fence

Distress Inks: Mustard Seed, Wild Honey, Spiced Marmalade, Rusty Hinge, Barn Door

Versafine Vintage Sepia ink

Clear Wink of Stella

Lawn Fawn Die LF768 Small Stitched Rectangle Stackables

Clear Embossing powder

Stardream Bronze cardstock

Neenah Solar White Classic Crest cardstock 80# & 110#

Various sequins

Technique of the Week: Stripe Inlay

This post is in conjunction with the Art 'n Soul newsletter's Technique of the Week article.

This technique is from Jennifer McGuire, and I absolutely love it! This is a great way to use up your scraps of paper.  Here is my first card, and I love how it turned out.

I already save strips of paper, but if you don't have any, cut any of your scraps of paper into random width strips. 

I especially save strips from my watercolor or Nuance projects. I absolutely do not throw them away, and now I'm very glad to find a great use for them. I sorted through my strips and pulled out all of the blue ones (there were a lot).

To start I got a piece of printer paper (text weight paper) and cut a piece 3.75" x 5". I wanted this to be the size of my panel. I covered one side of the paper with Stick-It adhesive, and pulled the release paper off the back. 

I set the panel on my table with the sticky side up and started laying the strips onto the sticky paper diagonally, with each strip snugged up the previous. I chose the strips completely at random.

Once the panel was completely covered, I turned it over and trimmed off all of the excess strips from the 3.75" x 5" piece. 

I took the striped panel and die cut it using 2 dies: Impression Obsession DIE311-R Santa's Sled and Memory Box die 99545 Snowdrift Breeze.

Once the piece was die cut, I covered the back of the panel with score tape. You could also use Stick-It, but I wanted to be sure the adhesive was very strong. 

The advantage of applying tape to the back is that it stabilizes your die cut piece; and also, when I turned the panel back over to the front, all of the open die cut areas had adhesive in them. 

Next, I die cut the 2 dies out of Neenah Solar White 80# cardstock. These pieces are for inlaying into the areas that the blue pieces came out of. 

This process is not very difficult, and actually goes surprisingly quickly since there is already adhesive in all of the openings.

Once the white pieces had all been inlaid, I added some Stardust Stickles to all of the snowflakes and Santa's hat. I then mounted the panel onto a piece of So Silk Fair Blue cardstock that was cut to 5.25" x 4". The piece was then mounted onto a base card of Neenah Solar white 110# cardstock.

I had so much fun doing this card that I made another one out of pieces saved from Nuance projects that are red, pink, gold and green. I used the Impression Obsession Merry Christmas DIE439-J, and Curious Metallics Super Gold cardstock.

I will make additional cards with the pieces that I cut out of these cards. Check back here on the blog in a few days for those, or come by the shop and see all of the cards in person. The photos do not actually do them justice.

Magenta Materials Used:

(If you are local, please look for products at Art 'n Soul. If you are not local and wish to find Magenta products, you can click on the link in the stamp name below each image, or you can visit the Magenta online store here).

Magenta Nuance

Other Materials Used:

Blue Card:

Impression Obsession DIE311-R Santa's Sled

Memory Box die 99545 Snowdrift Breeze

Strips of watercolor cardstock from previous Nuance projects

Neenah Solar White cardstock (80# and 110#)

So Silk Fair Blue cardstock

Stickles Stardust

Red Card:

Impression Obsession DIE439-J Merry Christmas

Strips of watercolor cardstock from previous Nuance projects

Neenah Solar White cardstock (80# and 110#)

Curious Metallics Super Gold cardstock

Various sequins