Guest Designer Frieda Oxenham

First of all I want to thank StencilGirl® Products for giving me the opportunity to share my work with you as monthly Guest Designer another year. And I want to thank all of you for having a look and maybe be inspired by some of my projects to make your own or pick up on a new (to you) technique. I was inspired myself this month by some of my own photographs of skies. I post a daily picture of skies on my Instagram account (@friedaquilter) and have done so since the start of 2019, and I remain in awe of how the skies change not just every day but on a minute by minute basis.

Here is the tutorial:

1.     Working in an A3 (297 x 420 mm or 11.7 x 16.5”) Daley Rowney Artist’s sketchbook or any other sketchbook of your choice, paint on the page using a selection of Paper Artsy Fresco Finish acrylic paints. I used Amethyst, Tinned Peas, China, Caramet and Pixie Dust.

2.     Brayer on white acrylic paint randomly and then remove it again through stencil S672 Disappearing Triangles with a baby wipe.

3.     Stencil on the page using stencil M081 Rows of Triangles and some of the colours of acrylic paints from step 1 with an cosmetic wedge. 

4.     Stencil larger triangles to the page using the small stencil from the January 2021 StencilClub and black acrylic gesso as well as pink/red oil pastel.

5.     The previous step proved to be a bit too bright for my liking and I covered large areas of the page with white gesso and removed some of it again through the stencil used in step 2.

6.     Spray the page with red, bronze and blue inks. 

7.     Brayer on more of the acrylic paint used in step 1 as well as white acrylic gesso and remove again with a baby wipe using the stencils used in step 2 and step 3. 

8.     Using an 8 x 10” gelli plate brayer and dark blue acrylic paint and put stencil L988 Earth on top of the plate. Using both deli and copy paper take prints. Then remove the stencil and take more prints.

9.     Cut out triangles from the papers made in step 8 and combine them with collage papers (mine came from the Flow magazine) featuring triangles and glue them down in an arrangement you like or as shown on my page. I used an UHU glue stick but matte medium will also work well. 

10.  Use the same stencil as in step 8 to cut out images fitting the triangles used in step 9 and glue them on as shown. I used some of my own sky photographs for this purpose.

11.  Outline the triangles with a black Stabilo All pencil and also scrape on some red/pink oil pastel (as used in step 4) to the photographs with an old credit card.

12.  Glue on the text (cut from magazines) and also outline with a black Stabilo All pencil

13.  Drip on some white and gold acrylic ink randomly. 

© Frieda Oxenham 2024