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.

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, 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 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 so dark.

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. For more photos of the entire process, please visit my Backporch blog here.