Guest Designer Frieda Oxenham

A bit of sparkle never goes amiss at this time of year and I love taking a peek in all the lighted windows as I’m passing, admiring the decorations. That was the inspiration for this spread. Here is the tutorial:

1.     In your art journal (I used the large one by Dylusions) brayer white gesso onto a spread.

2.     While the gesso is still wet brayer on small amounts of 3 different colours of acrylic paint (I used blue, red and green) and spread the paint out across the pages.

3.     Remove some of the paint with a baby wipe through stencil L027 Fade Horizontal.

4.     Brayer on more white gesso randomly and take it away with a baby wipe through the same stencil used in step 3

5.     Repeat step 4 but this time using blue acrylic paint.

6.     Repeat step 4 but with green acrylic paint.

7.     Stencil on the page still using the same stencil, green acrylic paint and a cosmetic wedge.

8.     Spray onto the pages through stencil L600 Mosaic Flowers Repeat using gloss spray (mine was by Dina Wakley Media).

9.     Using red acrylic paint and the same stencil as in step 8, stencil flowers onto the spread.

10.  Using blue acrylic paint and the same stencils as in step 3 and step 8, stencil more flowers and small dots on the pages.

11.  Repeat step 10 using green Stencil Butter.

12.  Stencil on green leaves using the same stencil as in step 8.

13.  Using stencil L163 Window Ledger 9 roughly mark out (in pencil) the window shapes on metallic tissue paper with gold dots, cut out the shapes and glue them with matte medium, onto the right hand page using the stencil as a guide.

14.  Stencil onto the right hand page using the same stencil as in step 13 and using dark blue/green acrylic paint , making sure the metallic dot tissue paper appears in the windows.

15.  Stencil on the left hand page using stencil S954 Solitary tree as shown, using the same paint as in step 14. 

16.  Add the text (quotation by Don Shapiro), using your preferred method. I did it with a Dymo Writer using self adhesive tape.

17.  Outline trees, windows and text with a permanent white paint marker and outline the leaves with a sparkly green gel pen.

18.  Stencil on text to the left hand page using white acrylic paint and stencil L318 Wall of Words.

19.  Spray sparkling bronze spray paint onto the windows through the stencil used in step 3.

© Frieda Oxenham 2023