Art Journaling with StencilGirl® Stencils by Frieda Oxenham

I’ve made these pages during the UK Corona Virus lock down and it was a very good diversion from everything that’s going on. We live in a very rural area of the Scottish Borders so living in isolation is almost an everyday thing even in normal times. Hopefully by the time you read this post things will be better and I hope you all stay safe as best you can. I have found Ben Okri’s poem that I have been illustrating over the past few months a great solace. Today we have reached the words: “We could change our life today, and seek out a higher way.” Appropriate, don’t you think!

Here is what I did to make this spread:

1.      Using the stencil Map with Roundabouts and 2 facing pages of the large ArtbyMarlene art journal, mark out the lines of the stencil on one page, then turn the stencil over and mark the other page in mirror image, using a pencil.

2.      Color in the pages as shown with permanent color, a different one for each page. I used orange and red Faber-Castell Pitt Artist pens.

3.      Using copy paper and an 8 x 10” gel plate with acrylic paints, brayer on 2 or 3 different colors onto the plate and take prints. Make a good collection of painted papers this one. I made a total of 15 papers which is more than enough and give you plenty of choice.

4.      Using the gel plate again with titanium white paint, brayer on the white, put Crackle stencil on top, take a print on one of the pages from step 3, remove the stencil, and take another print on one of the other pages from step 3. Do this till all the pages from step 3 have been used.

5.      Using the pages from step 4 and Circles Layer Me with your gel plate, add contrasting circles to your pages. Have extra paper on standby to clean your plate when changing colors.

6.      Using some of your papers and black acrylic paint repeat step 5 with the stencil Tokyo.

7.      Gather your papers together with the stencil Map with Roundabouts, and cut out the shapes of the stencil from your papers. Mark each shape on the paper using a pencil and cut out with either small scissors or a craft knife. Remember to use the reverse of the stencil for your mirror image page. Glue onto the pages made in step 1 using a glue stick. You may have to use tweezers for the smaller shapes.

8.      Outline the shapes with permanent black, white and gold markers.

9.      With a permanent black marker, add small black arrows as shown using the stencil Text and Texture Transform. Outline the arrows with a white marker.

10.  Write the words in black as shown for this part of Ben Okri’s poem. They read: We could change our life today, and seek out a higher way. Fill in open spaces in the letters with white.

11.  Spray the pages randomly with Perfect Pearl Mist Sunflower Sparkle using the stencil Crackle.

12.  Edge the pages with a permanent black ink pad.

© Frieda Oxenham 2020. To see more of Frieda's work, please visit her BLOG.