StencilClub Voices take on the Block Printing Set

Our fabulous Voices, Christy Anne, Carolyn McGowan, and Dee Spillane each looked at the Block Printing, the Stencil Club Set for December in a different way. There are art journaling spreads and an upcycled project to inspire you!

Christy Anne's Art Journal

This layout is called It’s OK to be different...in fact, Refuse to be Ordinary! 

I used Graphite Texture Paste by Finnabair to lay December’s StencilClub images down. Check out the shimmering texture paste: 

3 Art Projects by Carolyn McGowan

My name is Carolyn McGowan and I am a mixed media artist from Cincinnati, Ohio. I am excited to be selected for the StencilGirl StencilClub Voices for the December 2020 designs and have created a few projects: a journal page, art journal cover and upcycled container for storage. 

One of my goals, is to improve my ability to paint faces. Following a tutorial by Dina Wakley, I started the page by stenciling the large 9X12 design all over using aqua green and dioxazine purple. This ends up being the hair once the face, neck, and background are painted. I made a tiara using the 6x6 stencil with silver embossing powder. Faces are hard, but still fun to do!

I like to customize the covers of my art journals… mostly because I am messy so it’s usually the last thing I do once a journal is full. This cover was inspired by a paper towel that was used to clean up. It was too pretty to throw away, so I glued it around the spine of my journal. To finish, I painted one side white and stenciled using magenta and dioxazine purple with some white gesso.  The other side started with a dark background and has layers of the 9X12 and 4X4 stencils. 

Lastly, I upcycled a Cascade container to be used for storage in my studio.  I like repurposing items rather than adding to the landfill.  I was inspired by the blue and white pottery found in Chinese vases and plates using ultramarine blue and the 9x12 stencil to create a border along with the StencilGirl Chinese Garden - Koi stencil as my focal point. I made my first YouTube video if you would like to watch the process: https://youtu.be/RIlV9Kk7eFQ

I hope you enjoy creating with these great designs as much as I have!

 

Dee Spillane's Star Book

Hi, Happy Holidays. I decided to do a festive star book with the Block Printing set for December StencilClub.

I used non-traditional colors to create my patterned papers using the Block Print Stencils and my Gelli Plate, then I cut the papers to size.

Here are my covers:

Viola! A beautiful book to hang like a star ornament or leave open on your coffee table.

 

Tips:

• I used Seth Apter's IZink Ice through stencils. Excellent as texture paste. 
• I taped over the number on the stencil as the first print showed it. 😁
• I am messy, imperfect, and quirky so my alignment and messy backgrounds are so me. I admire precision but it's just not me.  
• Be careful to test your paint and papers. I had a bit of a mess from my fluid acrylic bleeding into the paper texture.  
• Use family photos for the front pages for everyone to enjoy.
• Star Book instructions. (I found this easy to follow.)

What will you create?

Watch Jill reveal the set she created.

Join StencilClub by 12/15/20 and get this exclusive club set sent to you along with access to the project video and pdf Jill created just for members, and you can be part of our art community on Facebook. We have so much fun sharing! 

 

StencilClub Voices create with the Vintage Wallpaper Set by Tina Walker

Laura Snow and Kandi Kwirant are the StencilClub Voices for October.

Here they are to inspire you with whimsical art journaling, Gelli prints, and mixed media collage they created with the Vintage Wallpapers  & Borders stencils designed by Tina Walker.

Kandi Kwirant writes, "In this pandemic, I have been missing my girlfriends and including my sister/friend the most. I miss being able to see their faces while we talk, going out to eat, laughing together and I miss giving them a hug, I am a hugger I admit.

"I decided to do a journal page about girlfriends when I saw what I thought looked like a row of dresses on this month's stencil.

"Hope you enjoy it, and I can’t wait to see everyone else’s art!" 

(Club members enjoy a secret Facebook Group.) 

Laura Snow jumpstarted her creative juices using her Gelli Plate to create collage papers. She kept using the stencils layer in depth. The results of that play:

I then took the stencils and added more depth to the papers by stenciling with the same stencils on top of the Gelli Plate created images and here are the results of that play.

Then, she walked away for a few days and when she came back, chose two of the papers to embellish. 

Laura writes, "I glued them to colored matte board with matte medium and then used cut out words from magazines, lace elements, buttons, etc and created two pictures." 

"What fun it has been to be able to be a part of Stencil Club." 

StencilClub stencils ship to all members on the 15th of each month. Are you ready to stencil with us? You'll won't believe the fun you'll have :)

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StencilClub Voices Create with Modern Botanicals by Rae Missigman

Our excellent StencilClub Voices took on Modern Botanicals, the September 2020 StencilClub set by Rae Missigman.

Here are Kandi Kwirant, Sara Jansen, and Laura Snow to share their art journals and collages.

Kandi Kwirant 

Borrows a Quote from Rae

I took an on-line class with Rae Missigman and saw this quote hanging on her wall. I thought this was the perfect time to borrow it from her since these are her stencils and because I needed to dust off some of my art supplies and get back into making art. It felt good! 

Renewal by Sara Jansen

Last year my husband bought a trike, and I've been riding around on the back of it a lot this summer, enjoying all the beautiful scenery Alaska has to offer. We drove through Willow where a wildfire had gone through a couple of years ago not too long ago. The trees are charred and black, but still standing. And growing right below them is fireweed. I'm not sure if they have fireweed in other places, but it is one amazing weed. It is the first thing to grow in disturbed ground and it is literally all shades of pink, until the end of the summer when it goes to seed which are lovely wisps of white.  The grass was a vivid green and the sky oh so blue. Those colors are etched in my mind. 

I started with a gelli print of the sky and the grass, using a couple colors each of blue and green, mixed with white on my brayer. Next, I used Rae's smallest stencil to indicate the black trunk of the trees. I have to tell you that I think the stencil would also make excellent mountains - I'll be playing around with that! I loved the 6" stencil immediately and made a copy on a separate piece of paper, and did some embellishing with paint pens, then cut it out. The white edge helps distinguish it on the page I think. I got stuck though, trying to figure out how to portray all the fireweed in the trees. Then, TA-DA. I remembered that after watching on of Mary Beth's Facebook adventures, I had purchased some clear Duralex. Some quick little improvised fireweed later and I was in business. 

I played with this stencil set for a long time, which I generally don't do. In the end, I think it captures what I was trying to achieve. 

Laura Snow's 

Gratitude Journal & Collage

My name is Laura Snow and I live in the Cincinnati area of Ohio. I have a passion for Mixed-Media Art and am mostly self-taught with the help of other artists like Mary Beth! I have been a part of Stencil Club from the beginning and am always using stencils in my art. Sometimes to create interesting backgrounds and also as the feature or center point of my artwork. 

What fun I had creating with Rae Misegman’s StencilClub stencils! I did two projects with her September offerings.

This first one is a journal spread in my Gratitude Journal. Rest, safety and peace are all things we are all searching for in this time of unrest and uncertainty.

For my second project, I started with a large piece of watercolor paper and collaged some old book pages to it. I then added some hi-flow Golden paint in Sepia and Shading Gray. After this dried, I sealed the entire paper with matte medium and then used a light gray and buff color to bring a lighter tone to the paper. 

Next, I used the smallest stencil with white paint and then followed with the largest stencil in Golden’s Violet Oxide. Lastly, I used a combination of Burnt Umber and Green to create an olive green color and used the leaf stencil. I placed all the stencil images randomly throughout the paper. 

I then used a 5”x5” and 6”x6” window and placed them around the paper framing in small pictures and traced and cut them out. To finish my little pictures I outlined the green leaves with a Uniball Signo white pen and wrote words on deli paper, tore them out, and glued them in place with matte medium.

I love including images from nature in my artwork and this month’s stencils made it so easy to do just that!

Join StencilClub

You can be a part of the monthly excitement that is StencilClub. Sign up by the 15th of the month to get Modern Botanicals by Rae Missigman. Get the details.

You can watch Rae's Reveal of her Modern Botanicals here. Need stencils by Rae Missigman? Here they are :)

StencilClub Voices Create with the Shaw-Apter At the Improv Mash-Up Set

From Jewelry to Cards this month's StencilClub Voices, Sherie Weiser Eddy, Marge Taylor, Lucy Medeiros Tyson, and I, Carol Baxter, have an explosion of inspirational ideas for you!

Jewelry? Yes!
Paintings? You bet!
Cards? Quite a few.

They began with:

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Sherie's Mixed Media Take-Out, Necklace, 

and Stenciled Paper

Sherie says: First up is an upcycled Chinese take out food container. (Washed and bleached, of course!) I gessoed both sides, then stenciled it with acrylic paints in lots of layers. The last layer is gold foil: I used tacky-when-dry medium through stencils and adhered gold foil. The chain is made of Sari ribbon, fabric wrapped vintage key, vintage tag, and beads.

Necklace: This was stenciled with acrylic paints on bleached muslin. Then I added eyelets with my Crop-A-Dile, and strung 2 rows of beads. On each end of the necklace I used bits of fabric I dyed with Tumeric and machine stitched it on. The two reddish beads on the second strand are lava beads. Used for holding essential oils, which I added.

“Your Voice Matters” This is a piece of my recent eco-dyed paper stenciled with the left-over acrylic paints and some Dina Wakley gloss sprays. 

Marge's Art Journal Page and Mixed Media Tags

Marge says: For the journal page, I often tear interesting words and phrases from magazines, to use at a later time. It felt like a good time to use this particular sentiment.

I also made the set of tags, and then thought I’d like to make a card to accompany the tags.

Lucy's Vibrant Paintings

Lucy says: I love mixed media, so I was excited to get August 2020 stencils from Seth Apter for StencilClub. I love the large grid stencil with the circles interspersed at intervals, the smaller stencils have a variety of mark-making shapes you can use in a variety of ways. I used multiple products, acrylic paint and inks, texture paste, collage, Neocolor II water-soluble crayons, Posca paint pens, and Pan Pastels. I also used some extra stencils by Seth Apter Recede M285 and Valarie Sjoden Celtic Spirals L764.  

The Zen of Improv Note Card Making with Carol

My goal one recent weekend afternoon was to use cards I had started and put down and create something, either simple or complex, that was snail mail worthy.

I must say, At the Improv is a go-to set for integration.

These first two have just the dancers in orange, so I used the large At the Improv stencil to put the ballerina silhouette behind the "window" and the leaping dancer in front. Then I embellished just a bit with gel pens and the small Improv stencil.

I began with several partially painted backgrounds and one with words, which I honestly did not think was salvageable. Mary Beth knows best and when she says to keep painting. Bronze paint knocked just enough of the sloppiness from a black crayon out.

I was listening to the song Jet Lag by Joss Stone while cutting and gluing and painting these last two cards. She was singing about how love makes you feel crazy bad and crazy good. Red, black, tan, and white came together just as I hoped. I used a craft knife to cut layers.

Want to create with At the Improv? Here are the details.