Frieda Oxenham: Art Journaling with StencilGirl® Stencils

There is more of Ben Okri’s poem left to illustrate and this month’s pages are a continuation of last month when I made a spread featuring the text: “The wise say life is a dream, and soon the dream is done”. The poem continues: “But what you did in the dream, is all that counts beneath the sun. In other words make your life worth living. This resonates specially during these still very difficult days in a world pandemic.  I aimed to make these dreamlike pages.

Here is the tutorial:

1.      Add gold gesso to two facing pages of 8 x 11.5”. I used my gelli plate to do this but you can also brayer or brush it on.

2.      Using a gelli plate large enough to cover your pages, put stencil Mountain Landscape underneath the plate, and on the top of the plate paint acrylic paint in suitable colours for the landscape. Then put the stencil on top of the painted gelli plate and take the print. Do this for both pages and for the second page use the other side of the stencil to get a mirror image.

3.      Stencil again, this time in the conventional way, with the stencil used in step 2, this time using a cosmetic wedge and the same colours but off setting it slightly. This gives an impressionistic image.

4.       Apply Glass Bead Gel (from Golden) to the right hand page through stencil Aztec Sun Large.

5.      Spray and paint the sun with yellow, orange and gold paint.

6.      Glue on the figure to the left hand page. My images are from a Stamperia rice paper collage sheet. Use gel medium to attach and also add the ship image to the facing page.

7.      Also glue on some flowers from the collage sheet.

8.      Stencil on leaves from the large stencil from April 2021 StencilClub using green paint and a cosmetic wedge.

9.      Add coloured circles (to represent flowers) by stencilling through stencil Starlight 6 x 6 using red, orange and yellow paint and a cosmetic wedge.

10.  Outline the leaves with a green colouring pencil and outline the rice paper images with a Stabilo All black pencil. Outline the mountain shapes with a brown colouring pencil.

11.  Add the text with a Dymo writer on transparent, self adhesive tape and outline with a permanent black marker.

12.  Glue on postage stamps as shown.

13.  Edge the pages with a permanent blue inkpad.

© Frieda Oxenham 2021. To see more of Frieda's work, please visit her BLOG.