Guest Designer: Karen P. Johnson

Hi, everyone! Karen P. Johnson here! I’m a Mixed Media Illustrator and Graphic Designer.

And it’s my pleasure to be here today to show you a technique using my StencilGirl® Products.

I was a freelance designer for 16 years. During that time, I used a lot of airbrush and I cut my own stencils using an X-Acto knife and poster board. You can only imagine how excited I was to find so many different stencils on the market and how happy I am to have my own line of stencils with StencilGirl® Products. It has been my goal to bring diversity to the craft and hobby industry, and I am grateful to StencilGirl® Products for the opportunity to bring them to you today in the Karen P. Collection. Today I’m going to take one of my stencils and create for you step-by-step a Tip PiC. A Tip PiC will show a hidden image as the angles are changed when you tip it towards the light. It is based on an old printing process called lenticular printing used to make baseball cards in the 60s.

First pick your substrate and your stencil. I will be using pages from my Dylusions Creative Journal
with black cardstock and my Fulfillment Large Mask stencil.

The paints I used were also from the Dylusions Acrylic Line in
Fresh Lime, London Blue, Crushed Grape and Squeezed Orange.

Once the background was completed, I began breaking up the space using
more stencils from StencilGirl® Products.

The first stencil is from Julie Snidle's Lost Languages collection.

I used Laid Back Lilac and Periwinkle Blue along with Squeezed Orange through the stencil.

The second stencil is the 6" x 6" stencil from Mary Beth's Private Collection 15.4.

I used Laid Back Lilac through the stencil.

Then I used Cecilia Swatton's Prayer Flags stencil. If you do not have it, you should get it, because when you need it, this stencil covers a multitude of sins. And I really like it. I used StazOn solvent ink in Midnight Blue through the stencil. And to add dimension, I used Laid Back Lilac.

I removed the Fulfillment Large Mask stencil revealing the face
along with the background and dimensional patterns.

In order to create the browns of the skin tone, I used the complementary color of blue on the orange.
Due to its transparent quality, Distress Ink Broken China is the perfect complementary color.

I used Pomegranate Seed to color the lips and to begin the process of adding detail to complete the face.
For those of you who are into the coloring book craze, my stencils offer numerous possibilities for coloring and drawing. Just choose your Weapon of Mass Creation. Here are a few of mine:

Once you are happy with the details it’s time to add the magic that turns this into a Tip PiC.
You will need an iridescent or pearlescent medium with no color. This is a colorless medium you add to other colors to change them into an iridescent or a pearlescent.

After placing the iridescent through Swallows stencil designed by Tracie Lyn Huskamp and Starlight Starbright stencil by Cat Kerr, you will have the hidden image of your Tip PiC.

When lying flat, you will not be able to see the hidden image.

I finished up this piece with stencil Cecilia Swatton's Vintage Script Stencil,
another favorite of mine, using Cherry Pie paint.

When you tip these pages towards the light, hidden figures will be revealed
and birds appear to fly across the page.

Thanks so much for visiting today! I can’t wait to see what you do!