StencilGirl Stencils & Wood Icing!

Hi! Mary Nasser here to share with you a great project to try when you want to use lots of StencilGirl stencils and use Wood Icing, too! Today I'm using five stencils: Mary Beth Shaw's Rafters stencils (both the 9"x12" and the 6"x5" sizes), Terri Stegmiller's Sign Posts stencil...

...Wendy Aikin's Crazed stencil...

...and a cute little 4"x4" mini Tile stencil from the January StencilClub mailing...

I've had lots of people ask about how to use Wood Icing with StencilGirl stencils, so I'm going to show you how! Wood Icing is a fabulous water soluble, acrylic based texture paste. It has the consistency of peanut butter and is easy to apply with a palette knife. It doesn't shrink or crack like modeling paste does sometimes. And it's also porous, which means you can apply not only acrylic paint or encaustic, but also watercolor and soft pastels! Okay, enough great things said about Wood Icing. Time to get on with the tutorial!

For this project, I used a 12"x12" Ampersand Artist Panel. I use painter's tape to help hold each stencil in place as I applied the Wood Icing. 

Using a 3" steel trowel palette knife, I applied the Wood Icing directly onto the stencil taped to the board. Apply the Wood Icing about the same thickness as the stencil. This doesn't have to be perfect! We're going to lightly sand this later. 

After you've applied your Wood Icing, carefully remove your stencil from the board and clean your stencil and palette knife right away. I use baby wipes to clean my stencils and palette knife so as not to wash Wood Icing down the drain.

In the steps below, you can see me adding the mini Tile stencil to the top, then the Rafters stencil to the left.

Lastly, I masked off one rectangle at the bottom with painter's tape, applied Wood Icing with a palette knife, let it set a few minutes, then carved back into it with a Scratch Art wood stylus tool. If you don't have this tool, just use the pointed end of a pencil or wood skewer! Again, carefully remove the tape before the Wood Icing dries.

After the Wood Icing dried, I gave the entire surface a light sanding with a fine grit sanding sponge.

Then I began masking each section off with painter's tape and began to paint.

The 6"x5" Rafters section in the upper left-hand corner was painted with unbleached titanium acrylic, the Sign Posts section on the right-hand side was painted with cobalt teal acrylic. And the scribbled section at the bottom was painted with iridescent rich gold acrylic.

For the large Rafters section on the left, I added Haematite Inka Gold. This is a nontoxic, water-based beeswax medium that's super-easy to use, too. I just applied it with my fingers then buffed immediately with a paper towel to this lustrous shine. I used Copper Inka Gold in the Crazed stencil section.

Next, I placed the mini Tile stencil onto an old survey map and traced both the inside and outside of the stencil with a pencil. I cut where I had traced, and adhered this map piece to the board using acrylic matte medium.

Then I placed the mini Tile stencil onto the painting itself and pounced on cobalt turquoise acrylic using my ink sweeper. I placed the small Rafters stencil back onto that section and pounced in iridescent antique bronze acrylic. I thinned iridescent bronze acrylic with acrylic gloss medium, brushed this onto the bottom scribble section, then gently wiped this away, allowing the bronze to remain in my carving to accentuate those marks.

I placed the Crazed stencil onto the center section, then pounced in iridescent copper light acrylic. Then the Sign Posts stencil was placed back onto the right section, and unbleached titanium acrylic was pounced back through the stencil. Then I used more acrylic matte medium to adhere some text from vintage books onto the sign posts! The very last step was applying little rivets to the large Rafters section on the left with a Viva bronze pearl pen.

Ta-da!

And here are a couple details of the work:

I hope I've inspired you to experiment and play with some new media.

Have fun painting and layering with Wood Icing and StencilGirl stencils!

Wishing you all the best,

Mary C. Nasser

Mixed-Media Map Art

Be sure to come back tomorrow for Jessica Sporn's Test Drive!