Mixed Media stenciled Pin/Brooch

Hello creative friends! 

Happy 2024 to you all.

Today I will be guiding you through an adorable little mixed media project using Faces in the Crowd stencil by Jennifer Evans.

When inspiration strikes I always act. 

With that said, a piece of fabric that I had stenciled faces on stared at me from the pile of “inspiration” on my desk, along with other bits of fabric and I immediately started stacking.

The result are these adorable mixed media pins that can be incorporated in art journal pages, adorned on gift packaging, given as friendship gratitude tokens or worn on your favourite clothing!

I have used the Faces in the crowd stencil designed by Jennifer Evans, countless times! 

Check out this project ~Paper Dolls

Let’s start the process:

Step 1:

Gather your base fabric, faces in the crowd stencil and black acrylic paint.

Stencil the faces of choice on to the fabric

Allow to dry completely 

Cut around each face allowing some room for stitching

Step 2:

Select fabric pieces of your choice (I also used a small piece of batting to create dimension.)

Cut the first piece ( the one beneath the face) 1/4” longer than the face 

Continue with all following layers increasing by 1/4”

Stack the fabrics with the largest piece on the bottom 

Step 3:

With the face outline on top,  pin all pieces together and stitch around the face 

I used my sewing machine but hand stitching works just as well

Using your fingers (or a tool you prefer) fray each of the fabric edges

I love me worn, unraveled edges!

Step 4:

Add some further individual personality to each one with beads and buttons! 

Step 5:

To create a brooch, simply stitch a safety pin in the back

Your pins are now ready to find their receiver- a perfect token in happy mail✨

Supplies:

Stencil~Faces in the Crowd Faces in the crowd

Black acrylic paint

Cosmetic sponge

Fabric

Needle

Thread

Scissors

Safety Pin

Thank you for being here, I look forward to seeing your creative ladies! 

Have a fabulously blessed and creative year!

xoTina 

TinaHoisArt

 

Homage to Emily by Lesley Riley

I’ve been transferring photos to fabric since 1999. I’m particularly in love with early photos, like tintypes, ambrotypes and daguerreotypes. I call my fabric collages, Fragments, and consider them to be color studies and story sketches. I guess I’m a storyteller at heart and fabric is my medium.

This past year, I’ve done several projects using one of my favorite photos of the poet Emily Dickinson. Poets are writers and I have a StencilGirl® stencil with writing instruments on it, so off I went to create yet another homage to Emily.

I chose to do my stenciling on TAP Transfer Artist Paper, an iron-on transfer paper that I brought to the market about 10 years ago. “Why transfer a stencil?” you may be asking? Inks can bleed into fabric, giving the stencil a fuzzy edge. By stenciling onto TAP and ironing that onto fabric, I get a nice sharp edge.

Using the pen with nib from my Pen and Ink stencil, I taped paper over the two adjacent brushes so I wouldn’t have any accidents. But I did in spite of my carefulness! I was about 1/2 way through when I got a phone call. When I picked up the stencil to resume, I laid down the wrong, inky side. Yikes! Looking for the positive in the situation, I decided it made the stenciled image look like a block print. I knew I was going to be layering Emily’s photo on top as well, so I finished up my stenciled background and transferred the page to a vintage textile from my stash.

I transferred my photo of Emily to a pale blue polka dot fabric to give it added interest and spiced up the image background with my 6” Night Sky stencil. The stars looked like daisies to me, so I added dimensional gold paint to the centers to complete the look. Based on her poem, The daisy follows soft the sun, I know Emily would approve of the daisy wallpaper.

The daisy follows soft the sun,
And when his golden walk is done,
Sits shyly at his feet.
He, waking, finds the flower near.
"Wherefore, marauder, art thou here?"
"Because, sir, love is sweet!"
We are the flower, Thou the sun!
Forgive us, if as days decline,
We nearer steal to Thee, —
Enamoured of the parting west,
The peace, the flight, the amethyst,
Night's possibility!

A writer needs her ink, so using the ink bottle stencil from Pen and Ink and my Derwent Inktense blocks, I painted the ink bottle onto a piece of the vintage fabric, wetting the Inktense block with a wet brush to a creamy consistency. After it dried, I applied iron-on fusible, cut it out and fused it onto the fabric collage. Everything was machine-stitched in place. I couldn’t resisted hand-stitching a real pen nib onto the collage.

While I was in stencil mode, I decided to create a couple of small one-off of fabrics with Kate Thompson’s Floral Waterfall stencil. I kept it easy-peasy and applied two of my favorite Golden fluid acrylics (Quinacridone Nickel Azo Gold and Alizarin Crimson Hue) directly to the stencil with a brayer and burnished the “inked” stencil onto a sheet of TAP paper. Once it was thoroughly dry, I ironed it onto a pale green print fabric, ending up with a nice sharp pattern on pattern, just perfect for one of my Civil War fabric collage series.

I hope you’ll give my stencil techniques and stenciling on TAP and fabric a try. You can also find TAP and check out more of my favorite tools and more in my Amazon shop. Please let me know if you have any questions. I am always happy to help -  lesley@LesleyRiley.com.  And please be sure to visit Instagram, where I post inspiration daily, and my website for even more inspiration and ideas - LesleyRiley.com

6 x6 Collaboration with Kristin Peterson and Tina Walker

Hello and Welcome to StencilTalk.  Tina Walker here today with my newest StencilGirl® Collaboration Column post.

This month, my collaboration is slightly different. Generally, my collaborations include multiple participants with many projects.  This month my collaboration is a one on one project.  I am partnering up with the amazingly talented, Kristen Peterson, from Altered States Studio.  I have been a long time fan of her beautiful work and couldn't be more thrilled to be able to work with her on this project.

The idea behind the collaboration was quite simple.  Since fabric often gets forgotten as a stencil substrate, we each cut out 12 2 x 2 inch squares of random fabric pieces, added stenciling to each + embellished them with stitching and buttons. Once the 12 pieces were completed, we swapped 6 squares each so that we ended up with 6 original squares + 6 squares from each other.  Then, we used the 12 squares to create a brand new project!  I love using small bits to create a larger piece.  It really adds so much detail and interest and is one of my favorite ways to create.

Let's check out Kristen's project.  She took the small 12 squares, put them together to make a larger piece, THEN, made a calendar out of that.  How freakin' cool.

Wanna see more of her project PLUS a walkthrough of her design process PLUS a short video of all 12 pieces?  Check out her post HERE!

There are so many lucious layers, details, and beautiful marks and design elements, I just can't stop staring at it. ♥♥♥

Kristen used the following stencils:

ATC MixUp 1

Numbers

Mid Century Modern Rocks & Leaves 

ATC MixUp Dube 

Monoprint Stencils & Mask 

Closed Leaves

Bittersweet Mini

Pickleweed Mini

Circle Rays 6

For my project, I used all 12 squares as little pockets in a machine stitched book.  You can never go wrong with little books with pockets. 😀

I even used some extra squares that I had made for my book tie.  I ripped the squares into strips, then sewed them together.  I love the look and am so happy with how it turned it.

I used the following stencils:

Leafy Doodle Verge

Whimsical Waves

Under The Sun

Oval Grate

Wildflowers

StencilClub Jan 2019

StencilClub April 2019

StencilClub June 2019

StencilClub Nov 2019

StencilClub Dec 2019

I hope you enjoyed our projects.  I love how we used the same starting squares yet ended up with two entirely different projects.  Although I've hosted many many collaborations, I am still amazed how different creative minds can use the same items to create such a variety of projects.

That's all for now.  Until next time!  Be safe and stay healthy.

XOXO

Tina

Grab your friends for a Spring Break Stencil Party - Art Journal & Tunic Tutorials with Shel & Peg!

Hi and welcome. 

March is all about Spring Break or Stenciled Poetry so Shel and Peg have teamed up to create some fun projects. 

This month they have used Floral Mandala Lace L646, Finding Your Tribe L414 and the Love Collage Stencil L312 along with a club stencil from Nancy Curry's October 2018 set: Stay in Your Magic.


Club stencils are exclusive to club members and are not found listed in with other stencils on the StencilGirl Products web site. You may be interested in checking out the club. You can order prior monthly offerings once you have joined the club. There are no specific membership requirements because we know you will love the stencils. In fact, you are even rewarded for ongoing membership! 

So, let's take a look at the projects.

This month Peg did what many of us would do on spring break. She worked in her journal. Here are a few pictures of her pages.

Peg started off with Distress Oxide sprays through a stencil or two. Then she layered on some paint.

You can see the lovely water droplet texture that can be created with this medium below.

The mask from the Finding Your Tribe stencil was used to stamp the image on the page.

And yes, there is a video showing the step by step process. 

Wouldn't it be fun to take your journal with you and your tribe of friends on a spring break?

Shel was inspired to make a stenciled t-shirt when she found some white tunic style shirts on clearance for one dollar at a local store. She thought it would be fun to make some bright designs on the shirts combined with words as gifts for some friends she thinks of as ‘Sisters in Art’.

The Finding your Tribe stencil designed by Carolyn Dube, combined with the 6X6 stencil ‘Stay in Your Magic’ stencil from StencilClub in October 2018 designed by Nancy Curry were perfect to convey how Shel feels about her art friends!

The flowers and doodle designs from Kristie Taylor's Floral Mandala Lace stencil and Traci Bautista’s Love Collage stencil made a perfect colorful Spring background to put all the words on top of. 

Before stenciling the shirt, Shel washed and dried the shirt with no fabric softeners. Then she ironed some freezer paper onto the inside of the shirt, shiny side down, to protect from any bleed through while stenciling.

The first step was to block off areas of color using painters tape and sponge in light colors of Decoart brand ‘So Soft’ fabric paint. Then Shel used some Pixie Spray on the backs of the stencils to help prevent any of the paint bleeding under the stencils during application. Masking tape was used to help mask off some of the parts of the stencils while adding the words to the design.



Shel thinks this shirt is a fun and happy design and plans to make more!

Buy some stencils to make your own spring break projects!

Painting on Fabric with StencilGirl® Stencils

Hello StencilGirl® fans! I’m Laura Fraedrich and I’m thrilled to be here on the blog to show you a recent piece I did with my George stencil. 

I have always loved fabric and have an extensive collection of it that keeps growing and growing. The funny thing is that I can’t sew to save my life. Many people have tried to teach me and are amazed at my lack of talent behind a sewing machine. I had an easier time learning organic chemistry in collage than I do trying to thread one of those things. I have major respect for anyone that knows how to operate a machine and create beautiful artwork with it because I am definitely not one of those people. Therefore I am left with piles of fabric that I don’t have much use for, unless I get out some paints and other supplies that I’m much more comfortable using and turn the fabric into a piece of artwork that can be framed and hung on the wall! 

For this piece, I used a black Jacquard Tee Juice marker to color in the spaces of my stencil, then used it to draw the firefly, clouds and mushrooms. I used Marabu Aqua Inks and a brush to paint the sky and grass, then used Posca markers to color the dog, firefly, mushrooms and clouds. I felt it needed some bling so I grabbed my Pentel Sparkle Pop gel pens (my new favorite pens) and added some glitter. Lastly, I drew some dots and highlights using my Uniball Signo white gel pen. I found a really cool double circle mat at Allard’s Art which completed my piece. 

Here is a close up pic where you can see some of the glitter from the Sparkle Pops. These pens are so cool!

This piece was inspired by a dragonfly that has been hanging around my yard for the last few months. Sadly my dog George who inspired my stencil design passed away this February. The dragonfly showed up shortly after and I like to think it is a gift from George to let me know he’s still with me. I miss him terribly, but am so happy that his spirit will continue to live on through my stencil design!

Happy Arting!
Laura