April winners and May tutorial ...

I will be announcing our April winners shortly but first I would like to introduce you to our May edition of Tips, Tricks and Techniques brought to you by team member Elaine Schoof. 

Backgrounds by Elaine Schoof

Hello. Today I am here to show you how to use stencils on your pages and the different ways you can use them. I love using stencils myself as they are a cheap way to make backgrounds and elements for my pages.

This tutorial will show how I made the background for my design team page this month.

Firstly I used a Kaisercraft 12” square stencil and used it to mist circles for my background. I didn’t want the mist everywhere so I used scrap paper to mask the areas where I didn’t want the mist. I tore the paper to take away the square look from just plain paper.

When I finished misting, I turned the stencil upside down and rubbed areas over my page. The mist that was left on my stencil then created the opposite effect of colour with white circles. Sometimes I only use this technique on my page. It gives the stencil 2 different effects.

Once my mist was dry, I then used the same stencil with modelling paste to create depth to my misting and background. Gesso paint works as well if you like a more blended in effect.

For my Happy embellishment, I ran a Heidi Swapp stencil through my cuttlebug. It gives a lovely embossed card. It might take a bit, to work out what layers you need, to get the stencil to emboss. For the cuttlebug I ran it in the following order; A plate, B plate, Stencil facing upwards, card, Embossing mat, my tin plate, some folded paper for extra thickness and then my B plate. It needs to fit quite tightly through the cuttlebug to get a firm embossed image. I have also used this technique for creating embossed patterns on tags, circle embellishments, etc.

And for the last element on my background, I simply used black pen with a stencil to create arrows on my background. Triangles also look great with pen.

And here is my final page ...

and now onto our April winners .....

We were working with this this amazing artwork by Josh Miels called We will remember them.

CRITERIA -  The use of Typography on your page - let those letters shine!

This artwork must have struck a cord with many of you as we had a fantastic participation - thank you all SO much.

Beverley Cunningham is our winner of the prize pack from Kaisercraft.

Chiao Yu is our winner of the prize pack from Mystical Scrapbooks.

Our random draw winner of a lovely prize donated by DT Helene Bogren is #10 Helen.

Congratulations ladies.

Could the winners please contact me on jjjustjane@bigpond.com with their postal details.  You have until the announcement of the winners for next  month to do so. Don't forget to grab our winners badge from the sidebar.  

Our Creative Team highlight from last month is Tracey.  She will receive a little surprise something from me.

Don't forget to enter this month's ARTastic challenge.  All the details are in the left sidebar. Remember you have until the end of the month to submit your entry.

Please pop back on the 15th when we will have more delightful team inspiration to show you.