Art is Good for You, a home decor piece by Sue Plumb

Hello stencil lover!

It's Sue Plumb here with you today to share my latest project for the StencilGirl Creative Team. Today's piece was created for our current "Home Decor" theme and as you may have already seen, the team have already been sharing some fabulous project ideas. For my take on this theme I decided to create a piece for one of my favourite areas of our house - my daughter's room. Now don't get me wrong, as she is almost a teenager and definitely not what you would call "tidy", I am not referring to the entire room. Rather, just her desk area where she sits to create her art. It's a lovely spot - beautiful white desk, great natural light from the window, and she has all her supplies readily at hand. (Quite unlike my own creative space, so yes, that is some jealousy talking!)

Here is my framed piece, entitled "Art is Good for You"...

I chose this message for my daughter as I am a firm believer that the creative process (in whatever form) is good for mental health, and I like to encourage her to follow her creative pursuits. I chose the colours for this piece based on what I knew she would like, and also because of some of the other colours in her room. 

To start, I began with an A4 size sheet of white cardstock and the Wall of Words stencil. I chose this stencil as I wanted to add some subtle text to the background and the happy and positive words made a perfect base. I didn't want the words to be too prominent though, so I chose a grey ink and applied it randomly using a dauber.

For my next layer, I chose the Random Circles stencil and a selection of Distress Oxides. Starting with "Picked Raspberry", this time I used an ink blending tool, and gently blended the ink onto the page through the stencil. I then repeated the process with the "Shaded Lilac", then filled in the final gaps on the page using "Tumbled Glass". I just love the way these three colours worked together on the page.

Look at the beautiful contrast from the crisp white pattern underneath once the stencil is removed...

Now it was time to add the focal point of my piece using the Art is Good for You stencil. I wanted to make it stand out from the busy background as much as possible, so I chose to use a black ink this time to help it pop. Again, I used a sponge dauber and sponged the ink gently through the stencil.

With the quote outline in place, now it was time for some more colour to help the letters really pop from the page. I chose another Distress Oxide "Peacock Feathers", swiped a little onto my craft mat, spritzed it with water and mixed it to make a paint. I then used a small brush to paint the colour onto the letters.

As you can see in the image above, I wasn't exactly precise when applying the colour to the letters, so some of the colour had dulled some of the black outline. To fix this, I grabbed a Sharpie and went back over the dull spots to blacken them again.

To add a little extra depth and interest to the lettering, I wanted to add some white highlights. For this step I used one of my favourite tools - a white correction pen.

The final step in my process was to add a few pretty little touches using some printed vellum flowers, leaves and a butterfly from Cocoa Vanilla Studio.

Once complete, I popped the piece into a frame and then placed it into my daughter's art space. She absolutely loved it! Look how gorgeous it looks sitting there...

Thanks for stopping by so I could share this with you. Until next time, happy creating!

You can also find me on my channels here:

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Best Ever!, a mixed media scrapbook page by Sue Plumb

Hello stencil lover!

It's Sue Plumb here to share my latest project created for the StencilGirl® Creative Team. During May and June the Creative Team members have been working with the theme of "Typography". Typography in artistic terms means using type as an intrinsic part of the artwork, or in some cases (particularly modern art), it may even be the artwork itself. For my piece, I decided to demonstrate how I often like to incorporate type on a scrapbook layout - as the basis of my background.

For my page, I chose to document a special photo of my daughter that was taken at her primary school graduation last year when she was awarded Dux (or Valedictorian for my American friends) of her school. This was the perfect subject to pair with a background featuring type. 

I began my project by adding some color diagonally across my cardstock. I used Mermaid Lagoon Distress Oxide with what I call the "smooshing" technique. (This is where the ink is mixed with water on a piece of plastic and then applied by smooshing it down onto the page to give a watercolor style effect - you can see it in action in my process video below.)

Next, I selected my stencils. I wanted to use two different types of fonts that I could layer on the page as part of my background. The first one I chose was the Wall of Words 9x12" stencil designed by Carolyn Dube. This stencil is full of words of wisdom, motivation, and laughter; and due to the uniformity of the text style, I thought it would be ideal as part of my background. The second stencil I chose was one of my favorites - Rembrandt's Words Small stencil. This stencil was also designed by Carolyn Dube and I thought the flowing script would provide a good contrast against the structured text of the Wall of Words stencil.

I used a small sponge to dab ink randomly through the Wall of Words stencil along the diagonal line of color I had created on the page. In some places, I overlapped lines of text to give a random, jumbled appearance. I then used some colored texture paste with the Rembrandt's Words stencil to add contrast and subtle dimension before leaving it to dry naturally for a short while.

I then returned to work on the textural layers that were going to go behind my photo in the focal area of my page. I used crumpled tissue paper, a paper doily, patterned paper, cotton thread, and frayed gauze to create a stack, then placed my photo on top. I then fussy cut some pieces from a Cocoa Vanilla Studio floral patterned paper which I tucked in under the diagonally opposing corners of the photo, further enhancing the flow of the page.

To give the diagonal design both a start and endpoint, I created two small clusters along the top and bottom edges of the page (which also helped to balance out the heavy focal area in the middle). I used a mix of patterned papers and embellishments from the same Cocoa Vanilla Studio 'Wild at Heart' collection that the floral pieces had come from. I also added some extra embellishments around my photo.

At this point, I decided my layout needed a little bit of something extra and I really wanted to tie in the gold color from the photo as well. I reached for my Military Style Stars stencil by June Pfaff Daley and some gold texture paste and stenciled some little gold stars across the page. I also added some splatters of gold mist and pink ink; and three fussy cut butterflies. 

And then I did something I don't usually do. I decided the background text on my page wasn't defined quite enough, so I went back in with the Wall of Words stencil and added some extra stenciled type. As soon as I had done it, I then felt it looked much better and my page was complete.

If you would like to watch exactly how it all came together, you can watch my process video here:

Thanks for stopping by so I could share this with you. Until next time, happy creating!

You can also find me on my channels here:

Instagram

Facebook

Blog

YouTube