StencilGirl Talk

Wednesday, January 22, 2020

Mary Beth's January VLOG: Restorative Time

Hello :)

In these days when we can and often do move blindingly fast,

it's important to

ssssllllllooooowwww down

and make time to rest and replenish our spirits.

Just breathe :)

Want to travel with Mary Beth?

YOU CAN!

June 20-27, 2020: Under the Influence, Essence of Mulranny, Ireland ~ INFO

September 13-23, 2020: ARTWALK ITALY ~ INFO

Tuesday, January 21, 2020

Romance, a Circular Canvas in Gold and Blue

Hey there! Carol Baxter here with you. Frame it or fill it with circles is the challenge.

I started with a circular canvas and a photo I wanted to use. (It's a photo someone gave me at an art retreat. Two guys playing mandolins, I wonder for who... How romantic is that?!)

I cut out circles from some papers from my stash (Psst! Gwen Lafleur's shop has pretties!) and proceeded to audition them on my canvas.

(The Simple Geo Circles Stencil would have been easier than tracing washi painter's tape, LOL.)

I painted the background with a combination of Soho Urban Artist Acrylic Gold and a blend of mostly Navy and a bit of Payne's Grey. I used these two colors to distress the edges of my circles.

As I auditioned the circle placement again, I realized the gold was too gold so I knocked it back with Paper Artsy White Fire.

I also realized I wanted a different circle. (Keeping with the theme it says wheels.)

I thought about stenciling in some musical notes in blue over the gold using the Musical Roundabout Stencil S608 by Sandee Setliff but in the end decided, much as I love that stencil, not to use it.

Next step: glue my circles down with UHU.

I mixed White Fire into Art Basics Modeling Paste and added flowers to pair with the paper I chose using the Peony Bloom Stencil S657 by Wendy Brightbill.

Excess modeling paste? No prob! I used 3 stencils to make some papers for later use: Trefoil Rieven Glyphs S491by Stephen Skaggs, the small from the May 2017 StencilClub set by Pam Carriker, and Heart Striped S068 by Margaret Applin.

The heart is sprayed with Moon Shadow Mist by Lindy's. I can't decide if I want to cut or tear the heart out so I am leaving it to dry as-is for now.

At first, I thought I would need to dust the petals with more White Fire, but the more I look at the piece I think it turned out just right!

Years ago, before StencilGirl was a thought in Mary Beth's brain, I took a class with Jen Cushman where she used molding paste through a stencil on canvas and added ephemera.

To this day it is one of my favorite pieces of art that I have made. It certainly inspired this one :)

I hope your day is luscious & romantic!

Carol

Monday, January 20, 2020

Art Journaling on Clean-Up Paper

Hi all, it's Gwen here with a new project and tutorial focusing on paint and texture. I frequently create art journal pages on top of pages in my journals where I've cleaned off my paint brushes, rubber stamps, and stencils. Cleaning off your tools in your journal is a great way to get over the fear of the blank page, plus it gives you a nice foundation to build on and you can get a lot of texture from the layers that build up before you ever start to work on them.

To start this page, I opened one of my current journals to a page where I had a pretty good amount of paint and imagery on the background from cleaning excess ink off of my rubber stamps from PaperArtsy.

I was thinking for this page that I'd like to do something with large circles going down the middle, so I cut a quick, large wonky circle stencil and mask out of a piece of copy paper and then used a pencil to trace around the inside of my "stencil" to get the general layout before I started painting.

Once I had the positioning down, I got out a few colors of PaperArtsy Fresco Chalk Acrylic paint and filled in the three circles, blending them together to get a bit of a shading effect.

With the circles painted and dried, I decided that I wanted to add some solid rectangles behind them and took out some contrasting colors of paint to add those in.

Next I took my handmade stencil back out and used it to mask off the areas around the blue circles and then stenciled on top of the circles using my Decorative 6-Petal Flower Screen, Decorative Flower Stamen Medallion, and Art Deco Sun Medallion stencils.

When that part was dry, I switched to the mask part of my handmade stencil and used that to cover my stenciled blue circles and then added pattern over the painted rectangles using my Collage Textures & Patterns, Leaves and Collage Textures & Patterns, Medieval Cyrillic stencils as well as the 9x12 stencil from my Ceramic Tiles StencilClub set.

From there I just pulled out some black and light green-gray paints and a fine round paintbrush (I like size 0 or 1) and added some outlining around the different sections. I didn't want perfection... I like the slightly off-kilter look and allowed my lines to be a little wobbly and to have varied thickness. (AKA, didn't worry when I couldn't paint a straight line. I just emphasized it even more!)

Next I took my Chinese Garden - Buddha stencil (the original 9x12 size) and added the word "balance" to my page as a title... something I'm definitely thinking a lot about in 2020.

I used a few different pens to add some scribbly journaling around the circles, close the gaps in my stenciled title, and add a few other marks to the page. I also used a bit more paint and a white gel pen to fill in the closed areas in the letters of my title. I really like how the marks on top of the layers of stenciled shapes give a sense of texture without any of the bulk in my journal.

It felt like it still needed a bit more, so I pulled out one of my first PaperArtsy stamp sets, EGL03, and used that to stamp a mini medallion in the center of each circle. (This stamp set features several of my medallion stencil designs in mini format and they play together beautifully!)

I stamped the image with black pigment ink and then heat embossed each one with my Wrought Iron Boho Blends embossing powder from Emerald Creek. I love that little bit of texture and dimension that you get from heat embossing.

Added a little brown and black ink around the edges to frame the page and I called it done.

I hope you enjoyed today's project and tutorial and that it gave you a few ideas for using stencils and paint in your art journals. And of course, if you try this at home, make sure to link me up so I can see.

Until next time, happy stenciling!

Gwen

Friday, January 17, 2020

StencilGirl® Art Journaling

By pure chance we have arrived at part of Ben Okri’s poem that has special resonance in January, a month in which time seems to be an obsession for all of us. Time passing, time coming, we think about time a lot more in this first month of the year and in this case the first year of a new decade.

If you want to see my previous illustrations of Ben Okri’s words you can find them by searching for me by name on this blog and they will all pop up. I try and make each spread very differently from the previous ones to keep it interesting but of course, these are all art made by me and that is a reuniting and returning element. This month we have arrived at the following lines: “Time is an act of consciousness: one of the great forces of the material world.

You will notice that I have used stencils from a previous StencilClub. If you’re not a member yet (and it would make a great gift to yourself for this New Year) you can still get these stencils by becoming a member and then asking for back issues.

Here is the step by step tutorial:

1. Use 2 facing pages from a large art journal. I’m using the largest size ArtbyMarlene journal that has the great advantage of being able to remove the pages from the journal (which is ring bound), work on them and return them to the journal when the pages are done. Lay out the pages on your work surface and brayer a variety of colors of acrylic paint onto your pages randomly. I used Fresco paint by PaperArtsy in the following colors: Pixie Dust, Orchid, Hyde Park, China, Zesty Zing and Lime Light. Let dry thoroughly.

2. Spray through parts of the large stencil from the July 2019 StencilClub using sparkly mica sprays in blue.

3. Brayer on a dark opaque paint (I used Fresco’s Baltic Blue) to the bottom part of the pages and remove the paint through the same stencil as in step 2, using a baby wipe.

4. Using a pencil and stencil Beautiful Halo and transfer the outlines of the stencil to both pages, at center bottom. Then fill in with a gold marker ( used a Faber-Castell Pitt pen) and edge the gold with a white marker (I used a Sakura gelli roll 10). Also outline the oval shapes from step 3 within the head using the white marker, then use a black marker to outline the face and the circle.

5. Add the word TIME to the left hand page by outlining the individual letters with a pencil, using stencil Vintage Typewriter Alphabet, and fill in with a black marker. Then outline with the gold one.

6. Glue on the clock onto the right-hand page as shown and outline with a black and gold marker. Outline the numbers with gold.

7. Stamp the words of Ben Okri’s quotation onto vintage paper using a permanent black ink pad and a variety of alphabet stamp sets. Tear out the words and adhere to the pages as shown using a glue stick. Outline the words with a black chalk marker and smudge.

8. Using Distress Crayons (or other water dissolvable crayons), rub on color (I used pink and yellow) in some places and remove through the stencil used in step 2.

9. Drip down yellow acrylic ink on the pages.

10. Glue on the postage stamps as shown.

11. Edge the pages with a dark blue permanent ink pad.

Thursday, January 16, 2020

Seth Apter's Drips, Recede, and a second ATC Mixup Stencil have arrived!

StencilGirl is pleased to share Seth Apter's latest stencils with you! A small, a mini, and a 9 new elements on his second ATC Mix-up.

Paint drips are often a part of Seth's artwork. The Drips Stencil makes it easy to add this organic element to your own art journal, and mixed media work.

Drips Stencil by Seth Apter

Seth's 4" x 4" Recede Stencil is based on hand-drawn elements in his art journal. Use it when you want to add a focal point in your art.

Recede Stencil by Seth Apter

Seth's ATC Mixup #2 has nine more mixed media grunge/graphic elements to use as backgrounds or foregrounds of ATCs, or elements in your art. You'll be able to express yourself with words such as true, no, yes, art, wish, and heal embedded in hand-drawn patterns. Three linear patterns without words are also part of this stencil.

ATC Mixup #2 Apter

You can access all of the graphically grungey stencils Seth has designed right here.

Tuesday, January 14, 2020

Frame It or Fill It with Circular Shapes by Peg and Shel

Hi - Shel and I are so glad you stopped by today.

This post for me, Peg, is all about gel printing with distress oxide sprays.

I was so excited when I got my new distress oxide ink pads. Then lo and behold they came out with spray. Well, how convenient is that? A friend of mine had gifted me a lovely set and I needed to break them out and use them.

As many of you know, my other loves are stencils and the gel plate. I would say if you have never stenciled on a gel plate you are in for a real treat. I videoed the process so you can see the step by step.

Because these inks are opaque, they show well on dark surfaces.

I actually have two videos for this month because I was having so much fun just treating on the gel plate using the sprays and I want to show you that in detail if you’ve never done it before. So there are two videos.

I cut a circle frame from a page in the journal to create a window. I dressed the window with a vellum "curtain" to create a bit of mystery. then I used Gwen's stencil to add the words to the vellum.

Stencils for my two projects found at StencilGirl and include the following:

Boho Birds Stencil L628

Border Circles Stencil L003

Deconstructed Della Robbia Custer Mask & Stencil S294

I hope you enjoyed my take on the challenge this month.

Shel says the theme for January 2020 Creative Team Projects is ‘Frame it or Fill it with Circle Shapes’ and she played with a combination of both in a 12” X 12” mixed media canvas art.

Shel also wanted to create with a dark to light or light to dark tonal effect, so she used a black, white and grey palette. She started by painting her canvas from black through grey and into white in a diagonal format.

Then she used the Circles Circles Stencil L301 and made circles of white on the dark areas and black on the light areas.

She followed this up by adding some shapes by layer one stencil over another to fill in random circles with patterned circles. Shel used a combination of Circle 6 S008, Spoked Wheel Collage S709, and Random Circles L071 to do this.

She used the same stencils on two smaller canvas panels which she layered with dimensional tape on top of the 12-inch square canvas. This is the ‘framing’ portion... playing linear shapes against the circles.

Shel finished all the canvases with black, white and grey pen work in various line widths, creating marks by my own hand as well as helping to clean up areas where she says she may have stenciled a bit too messily.