The Documented Life Project's prompt this week is leaves and the prompt for Journal 52 is stencil It.
I made the stencils for the fern & birds from a dies a friend loaned me. I cut them from plastic packaging that I recycled.
The background was painted with purple and hot pink paint. Then I stenciled the half circles using gesso and a Michael's stencil. After it was dry I put a light coating of blue paint over the gesso.
Next I stenciled the ferns and branches with green paint.
I stenciled the birds in purple paint on the journal page. Then I moved the stencil to the right a tiny bit and stenciled again so the birds would have a shadow. Then I stenciled them again on book text. I cut out the book text ones and glued them on top of the shadows. I love how distressed the page looks. I really like how parts of the purple peeks out through the blue.
Link to: The Documented Life Project, Journal 52, Paint Party Friday
I'm excited to announce that I was a guest blogger on Julie Fei-Fan Balzer's blog on Monday. It was a real honor for me. Julie's has invited guests to show how they use her stencils.
There are step by step directions on how to do this project on Julie's Blog. I hope you'll check it out.
She plans to have guest blogger a few times a week. I can't wait to see what everyone else does with her stencils.
Link: Julie Fei-Fan Balzer, Paint Party Friday
If you follow my other blog Art,Journal, Feel you may have read about the one for one swap where I was a participant. Click the link to see the wonderful balloon I received from my partner, Twinkletoes (Mo) Allan.
We used a Stampington Tempting Template for our balloon. I made this balloon I to sent to Mo. it is made from recycled cardboard. I used a Dyan Reaveley stencil and embossing paste to make the diamond design. I painted the whole thing yellow and then painted the diamonds with paint pens to add the orange and green.
The basket is also cardboard that I stamped with an old Stampin' Up ticking stamp and archival ink. I added Tim Holtz stickles to give it a bit more texture. The little characters in the basket are The Angel Company images.
I've done many swaps in the last 15 years and I have to say this was more fun than any of the others. There are a few reasons for that: I only had to make one, I was making it for a friend who I knew would love it, and I got to use several different products. If you have never been in an art swap, I recommend it. It's lots of fun!!
Link to: Paint Party Friday, Stampington Tempting Templates
The Gelli Plate is a never ending journey of fun. Yesterday I posted my homemade stamps and when I started playing with them I thought about how cool they would look if a slid them across the ink. This is so darn easy with the Gelli Plate. I think the picture to the left will end up being on the cover of one of my art journals. I love how it looks with the letter stretched. The color is a mixture of blue and hot pink paint. I love how they mix to make a purple color in some places.
Below is a print I made while trying to clean off the other ink on the plate. The head is a Julie Fei-Fan Balzer stencil. You can see bits of the purple from a previous peeking through in places.
Link to: September Colorful Gelli Party
This is another page in my Things That Fly book. I seem to be on a dream kick. I realized today that several of my pieces mention dreams. I think there is something about flying that makes me think of dreaming and being free.
Someone asked me how I did this page today. I started out with two pieces of sticky back paper that Joyce & I rescued from a trash bin. It was a great find until I realized I couldn't get any ink to stick to it. Even Stazon didn't want to stay on it. I thought maybe gesso would help so I gessoed several pages and this is one of my test project.
I have so many kinds of ink on these pages. I haven't worked a lot with distressed inks in my books because they are not water proof. Neither are Adirondack inks... At one point I had words stenciled all over the background of this. I forgot I used distressed ink and now most of the words are gone. The color was much darker but when I used gel medium to glue the butterflies the ink all move around again. Note to self... use paint next time. I just don't have all the yummy colors in paint that I do in ink. I know there is something I can to to fix the ink... I'll ask the M3 girls.... they will know what I need to buy.
The Show Off Butterfly and Branches stencil is done with green stazon refill ink that I stippled on with a brush. The gesso had enough tooth to hold the stazon. The oranges are Adirondack and Distressed inks. The yellows are Stampin Up and Distressed inks. The bird came from Vintage Printable. The two butterflies are Stampin Up punches and the sticky back paper.
I started by stenciling the green flower branches. Then I stippled the oranges and yellows on the pages. Next I used the Crafter's Workshop Art stencil for the words. I also used a couple of homemade stencils to add texture to the background. I lost a lot of that to the moving colors during the gluing process.
When it was all dry, I outlined the butterflies with a brown Stabilo All Pencil and the bird with the black Stabilo All Pencil. The words are done with a chisel tip Sharpie. The most interesting thing is how the white outline came about. The gesso is not very thick on the slick paper and all I did was scratch away all the paint colored gesso around the letters with a wooden tool the I assume is for blending. I've had it forever and never knew what to do with it. I'm learning to use all kinds of things I bought in the past and never learned to use.
This page was a learning experience and at times frustrating. The next thing I purchase is some kind of workable fixative for my water color inks!
Linked to: Artist Play Room , The Sketchbook Challenge , Mail Artists Corner Challenge
