Guest Designer: Audrey Serruau

Ch’aska, Goddess of Stars – a tutorial

Hello Stencil Lovers!

Audrey Serruau here! I'm very thankful and honored to post on a StencilGirl Talk today!
I wanted to share a tutorial with you. Are you ready?

For this piece, I have been inspired by Inca mythology, and I decided to name this canvas Ch’aska, Goddess of Stars as a reference to the Inca Goddess of Dawn and Twilight.

Let’s get started!

First, here come the supplies you will need:

-a rectangular piece of cardboard

-acrylic paint: black, white, midnight blue, magenta, light blue, gold and copper

-light modeling paste (or texture, or embossing paste, choose the one you prefer!)

-embossing powder, it needs to be a contrasting color with the background: I chose teal

-a sheet of vellum paper

-a paint brush

-a sponge dabber or a piece of sponge

-a dotting tool (optional)

-a toothbrush (optional)

-a palette knife

-a white gel pen

-baby wipes

-a heat gun

-masking or washi tape

And of course, stencils!

For this particular piece, you will need Rose Window, Decorative 6 Petal Flower, Marrakech Set, and Abigail, A Timeless Woman.

First step:  the background

For the background, I challenged myself to create a Galaxy background.

To begin with, get your chipboard and paint it black. Let it dry.

Then, with a piece of sponge, apply a few quantities of Magenta, Midnight blue and light blue everywhere; follow your intuition. I took different pieces of sponge, but I ended up using only one as I found the colors were blending better together, and the result was looking more natural.

Let it dry (there will be a lot of “let it dry” in this tutorial: you can of course heat set your paint instead of letting it dry naturally).

Last step for the background: the stars!

Pick up a bit a white paint with your toothbrush or your paint brush and splatter your canvas with your finger. 

Step 2:

Put the Marrakech stencil on the right of the canvas and apply a thin layer of modeling paste with your palette knife. Each time you use a stencil, don’t forget to clean it up with a baby wipe. This way, the paste won’t dry in it and the details will remain as precise as they were when you first used it. Before the paste dries, apply a generous amount of embossing powder, and let it dry.

Step 3:  Ch’aska

While the paste dries, you can start working on your goddess: apply black paint through Abigail stencil with a sponge dabber. Do the same on the vellum paper, you will need this to protect your design later on.

Step 4: finishing the background.

The paste should be dry by now. You can now heat set your embossing powder with your heat gun.

Step 5: final touches to Ch’aska!

Once the embossing powder is heat set, cut the outlines of your goddess on the vellum paper and put it on top of your design. Add the Rose Window stencil above your goddess’ head, like a crown, and the Decorative 6 Petals Flower near to her neck. Temporarily set them onto your canvas with tape, so they don’t move when you apply your paint.

Apply gold paint through the Rose Window and copper paint through the Flower.

Move your flower stencil and apply copper paint as many times as you want, wherever you like, to finish the hair dress of the goddess.

Because the face of the goddess was not popping up as much as I wished, I highlighted a few details with a white gel pen. And this beauty appeared:

Isn’t she gorgeous?

I hope you will like this tutorial as much as I had fun realizing it!

You can find more details about my art on my blog at: http://orquideart.canalblog.com/

On my Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/audrey_crafty/

Or on Pinterest: https://fr.pinterest.com/hodrey/

Thank you for reading, and again, thank you to the StencilGirl Team for giving me the chance to share my work with you all!

Have fun stenciling!
Audrey Serruau