Stenciling Shoes!

Hi! Mary Nasser here!

I spent Thanksgiving break with family and enjoyed lots of time with my little niece and nephew.

This weekend – in anticipation of St. Nick’s Day today – we painted canvas shoes together!

Growing up in St. Louis, we always celebrated St. Nick's Day by putting our shoes by the fireplace before going to bed December 5^th. St. Nicholas would visit during the night, filling our shoes with treats for us to find on the morning of December 6^th!

Using only two stencils – Kae Pea’s Midcentury Modern Elements #3 and Jamie Fingal’s Zen Landscape – acrylic paints, canvas shoes and Stained by Sharpie fabric markers, my goal was to design a fun pair of shoes with lots of colors rhythm and movement.

First, we stuffed our shoes with newsprint to support the surfaces as we painted.
Any canvas shoes will do. I like the slip on shoes because they give me more surface area to paint on. 

Don’t be intimidated…artists paint on canvas all the time! This canvas is just a bit more three-dimensional!

I started with my lightest color (yellow) and my favorite stenciling tool – an ink sweeper – to apply the first bits of design elements. Adding less paint with the ink sweeper prevented the colors from seeping under my stencils, too. I also added gestural paint strokes in yellow with a paintbrush after stenciling and repeated this process with each color. And I just used a baby wipe to remove excess paint off the rubber soles of the shoes, too.

I added red paint:

then green paint: 

and blue paint:

Lastly, I added additional colors with Stained by Sharpie fabric markers. I really loved playing with these because it felt like painting – with the brush tips, smooth application and bright colors.

The yellow, pink and orange markers are both intense and transparent, not covering any of my previous layers of stenciling or brush work!

I had such a blast making these!

I hope I've inspired you to experiment and play with your StencilGirl stencils!

Wishing you a Happy St. Nick’s Day and a wonderful holiday season!

Mary C. Nasser
Mixed-Media Map Art

Surface Design With A Stencil...

Hello and happy Friday.  I'm back with another fun use for these fabulous StencilGirl stencils!  This week I've been playing with Jane LaFazio's Eucalyptus stencil to take a piece of commercial fabric and make it uniquely my own.

I started with some acrylic paint and an old brush, as well as this piece of fabric, which I must say is really quite wonderful as it is.  But, it's not uniquely mine yet...

 I started with the two blues on my palette and used usd them as is and mixed them up a bit to create subtly different blues.

After that had a chance to dry, I went at it again, this time with the gold paint.  I doesn't show well here, but it has a slight metallic shimmer to it.

I used my altered fabric to make a fully lined toiletry bag.  I've done a tutorial over on my blog for two sizes (the toiletry bag and a smaller cosmetics bag) of this fully lined bag for those of you who are into sewing.