StencilGirl® Products Best Nine 2018

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Follow us! Are you on Instagram? Join the StencilGirl community! We are finding tons of inspiration and sharing! You can follow us by clicking HERE. Want us to share your Instagram photos? Use the hashtag: #stencilgirl Here's a look at our top 9 Instagram posts in 2018:

Many thanks to everyone who's connected with us and inspired us on Instagram in 2018!

Looking forward to an inspiration filled 2019, too!

Happy New Year!

Artful Celebration- Home Decor

Hello,

We're so thrilled to be on the blog today. This month the theme is Artful Celebration. Since it's December, it's the season of Christmas and then the coming New Year. 

We decided to create a few home decor products that we could use at home during this season. We chose very wintery colors- White, Blues and Purple. 

Here's a look at what we've created:

The technique to create these is super fun and easy. Hence, these things make for quick projects. They are also great gifting ideas. We began with some MDF bases and gave them all a nice coat of White Chalk Paints.

Next, was playtime with the stencils. We used stencils from the ATC Mixup- L655 designed by Andrew Borloz, L657 designed by Carolyn Dube and L 665 designed by Kristie Taylor. We began with Grey Chalk paint, adding light blue, lavender and then dark blue. 

Three steps and we have these gorgeous products to flaunt. Here are some more pictures:

Hope you're inspired!

Hugs Sunila & Aditi

Mini Printmaking Stencil Sets by Ann Butler are here!

Are you squealing over the artistic possibilities for card making, quilting - faux and actual, playing with patterns and colors, not to mention all the gel printing fun you can create?

Ann Butler says, “I love working with stencils on all sorts of surfaces but especially fabric. With stencils, I am able to create one of a kind fabric pieces to use in my art and home decor projects.”

Ann's Mini Printmaking Stencil Set 1 includes patterns withing shapes:

Circles (L691), Squares (L692), Hexagons (L698), Ovals (L699), Rectangles (L700), and Triangles (L701).

Ovals Set 1

Use your inks, markers, pens, and paints to make this set of nine 3” ovals including vertically slanted stripes, looped crosses, 8-petaled flowers, rick rack, dots, thick horizontal lines, hearts, organic vertical waves, and a solid oval absolutely dance in your artwork.

Circles Set 1

This set of eight 3” circles includes hearts, random pieces, 10 pointed starbursts, straight lines, chevrons, diamond net, curlicues, and zigzags. 

Magnet using the Circles Set.

Rectangles Set 1

Hearts, a sweetly delicate pattern, directional triangles, starbursts, diagonally slanted lines, patterned flowers, rectangular zigzags, a petal pattern, and a solid give you lots of depth and artistic possibilities when you use this stencil.

Squares Set 1

The set of six 3” squares including diamond Vs, random lines, directional triangles, chevrons, Fleur de Lis, and stars are ready for you to use. 

Mini notebook!

Triangles Set 1

Nine 3” triangular motifs are perfect to use with the mini gel plates to add dimension and depth to your art projects. You get directional triangles, thick & thin lines, a sweetly delicate pattern, basket weave, bricks, hearts, stars, a pyramid, and a solid. 

Hexagons Set 1

This set of six 3” hexagons include stripes thick and thin, Fleur de Lis, squares, a sweetly delicate pattern, random lines, diamonds & Xs.

 You'll discover all of Ann Butler's stencils right here.

Merry Christmas from StencilGirl!

from all of us at StencilGirl...

Wishing
you a
VERY
Merry Christmas!

Artful celebration with digital collage

True confession:  I usually fall way short of my ambitious goal of sending hand-crafted holiday cards in a timely manner, and more often than not they turn out to be "Happy New Year" messages sent as the holidays are winding down.  In recent years, they have mostly been digital.  I like getting my hands into my paper, glue, and paint as much as the next mixed media artist, but I also enjoy the limitless possibilities of adding digital collage to my artist toolkit.

I use an iPad Pro and an Apple Pencil stylus, and I have dozens of apps for image manipulation.   By taking photographs of my drawings, paintings, gel prints, art journal pages, I am able to change colors and sizes, play with opacity, texture, filters, and layering to recycle and reimagine my work over and over again.  For my holiday greetings this year, I'll be using this image that I created with three different StencilGirl® stencils, two free apps, and a photo of my daughter.  Using standard stenciling techniques on the gel plate and then photographing the results, I created digital stencils to use in my digital collage. 

To begin with, we have my lovely daughter, who was born in Ethiopia, and on the day I took this picture on a museum visit she was wearing a top with African-inspired motifs.  I started this project by searching out Ethiopian designs. 

Ethiopian design motifs in painting, textile, architecture and tattoo!

We're not a religious family, but I do love the Ethiopian cross, which typically has four equal legs.  You can find similar crosses in Celtic design, in the Maltese cross, and in religious iconography from many other cultures.  StencilGirl® doesn't yet have any Ethiopian crosses, so I improvised.  I used the Maltese Set S124 designed by Michelle Ward, the Ornamental Petals Mask M096 designed by Gwen Lafleur and the Boho Mandala Circle S609 also by Gwen Lafleur.  For all three stencils/masks, I needed to isolate the image.  After printing them I photographed them and then took them to a free iPad app called Background Eraser.  If you print with a high-contrast color on white paper, it's very easy to remove the white background by selecting and deleting all the white in the photograph. You end up with a PNG file (basically an image with a "clear" background) to use as your digital stencil design.  I also used the Background Eraser app to isolate my daughter from the original photo I took at the museum.  Once I had my digital collage elements ready to use I went to another free app, one of the most powerful art apps you can get: Procreate.  Procreate is where I began layering and resizing my elements, as well as turning one of my originally black prints to white.  I like that the lacy cross is a bit reminiscent of snowflakes, and the traditional green-red-white Christmas palette is also common to much Ethiopian art and craft.  The resulting digital collage is something I can use in lots of ways.  I can print it on my laser printer, collage it into my art journal and then add more paint, stenciling, and collage to it.  I can use another app to add text, I can insert it into a year-end "greetings from our family" letter to send by email.  I can change the colors, add texture layers, make it painterly, make it sketchy - you name it.

Once I started adding digital image manipulation on the iPad and digital collage to my toolkit, it really opened the door to exciting new possibilities - and perhaps best of all at the holidays, you can do it while sitting in front of the fire with your family.  They're probably on their electronic devices too!

Ornamental Petals Mask M096

Maltese Set S124

Boho Mandala Circle S609

You can go caroling with cards all year long - acrylic, pen and ink greetings by Carol

Listening to Christmas Carols and making cards. Yup. That's been me for about a week. I have made about 60 so far. Don't stop me now!

It started with the need to make a few Christmas cards.

I had a card (I now wish I had saved to show you but I made tags out of it instead.) with the red part like the one below, except it looked like nothing great but I thought if I did it again, I'd have a tree.

Trimmed with acrylics, Papermate Inkjoy Black pen, Signo Uniball White pen, and Traci Bautista's Tropical Floral Stencil.

Then it turned into gifts sets of 4 to 8 cards. I did mix and match at first.

Acrylics, white pen, and Carolyn Dube's Dance of This Life Stencil.

Acrylics, white & black pens, a bit of washi, Mary Beth Shaw's Chain Mail, Jessica Sporn's Hands, and Tracey Lyn Huskamp's Rabbits Stencils.

There are a couple of alphabet stencils that would work for this. I used Chunky Alphas by Joanne Shaper. I added washi tape (You can find it at Gwen Lafleur's store) for contrast. Next, I drew with a pen around the letters I wanted to highlight. Ps & Qs (as in mind them) worked for this one. Others I marked up "HI" and "OK".

The yellow in the chunky letters is distress crayon.

Obviously, doodling can take a lot of time:

There is pink marker work and also some white pen work that you can see if you were looking at the actual card. The stencil is from StencilClub - Jessica Sporn's Feelin' Groovy set.

Or just a little where I drew super simple butterflies:

ATC Mixup by Jennifer Evans is the stencil.

Other than the Christmas card, this one took the longest.

Pink and green markers, green gel pen, yellow distress crayon on randomly painted acrylics. StencilClub: In the Garden by Terri Stegmiller.

I made a couple of notebooks on the same theme complete with flying pigs randomly (annoyingly?) stenciled in different places on a few of the pages. The piggies are rubber stamps designed by Sandee Setliff.

I left the insides of all my cards blank except for this one that seemed to warrant something more:

Black pen traced around acrylics, stenciled with Your Thoughts by Pam Carriker.

My BIG tip: When you make a card you like, make a few more. You can always vary them a little so you don't get bored.

I got a totally different look on these 2 cards by the ways I added green and yellow paint and how I used my brown gel pen.

Mid Century Modern Rocks and Leaves Stencil by Jennifer Evans

Here's the thing about card making: You get not only better as you go but ideas will steadily begin to percolate!

I have a book of business letter samples from maybe the 70s. Perfect for card making.

I liked this round in the small of from Pam's Woman of Mystery StencilClub set. I thought about outlining the words "love" and "hope" from the circle but then I thought I would need to do all of the loopy lettering and, well, I had to call a halt somewhere.

Ink the round edges in green.

And, if you do as I did and clean up part of your office the next day (looking for circle cutter I never found) in the midst of your card making, ephemera might appear that you have no idea whence it came.

I think these are my faves. At least at the moment. I want to make some in black and white.

My BIG tip: When you make a card you like, make a few more. You can always vary them a little so you don't get bored.

I hope I have inspired you to go make a few sets of cards. I challenge you to pull out your stencils and look at ones that would suit your card-making style.

My last tip: Save some for yourself because you might need to send an actual hand-written missive to a friend or five you love in the coming year!

If you want to delve into card making in a much more 3D manner, check out Debi Adams' online course at StencilGirlStudio!