Dreamweaver Brass Stencil Cameo Head Hello

Good afternoon and welcome. Firstly, warm welcomes to a new follower, Diane H. of  Nellies Nest. Thanks so very much for becoming a new follower.

Secondly, Follower #89 (this post) did not contact me in the specified amount of time, so Mr. RG came back on the job, and selected another follower for a little surprise. Follower #43, Sheila of lalacrafts was RG's choice this time around. So hopefully Sheila will contact me by July 22 (48 hrs from today) to give me her mailing info and I can send her a little surprise.

OK, on with today's card. I've seen brass stencils used for embossing for quite a while, but just never got around to trying this. All the videos I've seen show using a plumber's red rubber mat 'thing-y' to emboss with, and we've never bought this plumber's kit that is shown. Decided why not just try the tan embossing mat I use with everything, so I did. Took me a couple of tries to get the sandwich right (cause I'd forget the stacking order I'd see in the videos by the time I actually got around to trying this!)*

- Embossed a white piece, trimmed out the cameo head section. Very fussy cutting too. Embossed a black textured paper for the background, as I love black & white cameos. I've always thought they were such a genteel, old fashioned look.  Trimmed the oval embossing with tiny pearls - which keep coming off even though they are supposed to be adhesive! Also kept thinking the head looks 'crooked' until I looked at the stencil again. I knew I had the piece straight going through the Big Shot!

-matted on a textured silver snippet and then on a Heartfelt Decorative Window Die because I thought the cameo needed some frills around the plain mat.

- Background created with a white index card (which just happened to be handy and it worked fine). Used Dylusions Slate gray diluted with water then diluted with white linen. The pink spray was made using some acrylic paint which had thickened so much as to be unusable, but a few blobs in the bottle - adding some water, makes a fine spray - just shake it well first. Added some irResistible Silver spray - again shake well. The pink added just a touch of color and the irResistible created some nice blotches. Embossed this piece after it dried with C/B Anna Griffin Piroutte EF. Used a sponge to dab over some Fluid Chalk Charcoal Gray just to bring up the embossing a bit.

- S/B curved border to shape the edge of the card and another border cut some black to go on the inside edge.

*Here's the order embossing was done: Stencil on the cutting plate - face up, covered by card stock. Tan rubber mat, 2nd cutting plate. Used the Big Shot Multipurpose Platform, with all tabs lifted out of the way. I tested the sandwich with one tab down as a shim, the machine didn't want to push it through, so lifted that tab out of the way, and then the sandwich went through more easily. It felt 'tight' but crankable without damaging the machine. Suggest if you try this, test your own cutting machine carefully, and if the sandwich seems too 'thick', try it without any tabs down & use shims if you need to. I've seen videos where the stencils were used with Cuttlebugs too.

Have a wonderful Sunday afternoon and I'm off to get some scheduled posts ready. We really need to get back to the basement project and get some more organizing done. It's a slow process! Thanks for joining me this afternoon. Hugs & Blessings.