Stencil Club: A Tuscan Summer Day

Over the past few years, I've gotten hooked on stencils. At first, I thought stencils were something that had to be traced carefully and filled in with color. I thought they would give a stiff, boring look to my artwork. After taking some workshops and watching videos on how to use stencils, I discovered that they were pretty magical.

One of my friends told me about the Stencil Club, which has exclusive designs by some of the top artists of Stencil Girl. Each month, you get three different sized stencils by the same artist plus a video and membership in their closed Facebook group. The Stencil Club designs are not for sale to the public; they are available only to club members.

I decided to give the Stencil Club a try, and as luck would have it, this month's artist is one of my favorites: Gwen Lafluer. When the stencils arrived, I pulled out some of my favorite supplies and got to work.

The tile-inspired designs made me think of an old country home in Tuscany...not that I have ever been there, but I can dream, can't I? I pictured warm golden colors and sunlight and charmingly aged floors and walls. For the background of my journal page, I decided to use a base of turmeric teabags with the biggest stencil (9"x12") done in white.

Dried, empty turmeric teabags ready to be glued to a journal page.

I got to work spreading matte medium on the blank page with an old credit card, placing on the teabags, adding more matte medium on top, and scraping off the excess.

The first row of teabags was applied to the wet, matte medium covered page.

Eight turmeric teabags covered the page perfectly.

Little pieces that were snipped off the top of the teabag (so that it could be emptied) add interest to the background.

White acrylic was applied through the stencil with a makeup sponge.

Once the white paint had dried, I carefully applied VersaMark on top of the 6'x6"stencil, sprinkled on some of my Emerald Creek Baked Texture embossing powder in chunky rust, removed the stencil, tapped off the excess powder, then blasted it with my heat gun. The rust, white and turmeric colors  were perfect together. (I was having such a good time and so far into my "zone" that I forgot to take photos.)

It needed a little more oomph, so I searched through my boxes of ephemera to find just the right item that said 'Tuscan kitchen on a sunny, relaxed day' and auditioned a bunch of items. I finally settled on some birds that I cut from les Oiseaux, a beautiful Florentine paper available on Gwen's website. I carefully tore the birds out of the paper, added antique linen Distress Stain to age them, and edged them with a touch of brown chalk ink. Next, I used gel medium to adhere the birds to the page.

Birds were cut from the gorgeous les Oiseaux Florentine paper.

I was feeling like the page should hint at a window, so I added an edging, at the bottom, of one of Gwen's Art Deco Border designs to suggest the window ledge. Again I used the VersaMark, but this time I sprinkled champagne-gold embossing powder. As final touches, I added small white sections of the fluer de lis, a little gold on  the tips of the the rusty fluer de lis, and with my fingertip, a bit of yellow ochre paint to blend the birds into the background.

I am so glad I took the plunge and joined the Stencil Club! I want to spend the whole weekend playing with the new Stencil Club stencils, which I am sure are going to be among my favorites. I can't wait to see what interesting stencils arrive in the months to come!

"A Tuscan Summer Day" journal page

Turmeric Flip Journal

A lot of artists are hoarders--not the kind on television that need intervention--but we are savers of bits and pieces of pretty things. Sometimes we save ugly things because they are just so very interesting. We save pieces of pretty paper, yarn, fabric, metal, rocks, sticks and weird stuff from garage sales.

One of the many things I save is teabags--used, dried, and emptied of their contents. They add a nice vintage look to a page. (You can see some of my past creations here and here.) My husband recently switched to turmeric tea, and I loved the golden color of the bags, so he started saving them for me. (Is he a good husband or what?!)

Like many, I have boxes and drawers full of unfinished artworks. It turned out that a lot of them were 6"x6"...probably because that is the size of my geli plate. I decided to use the scraps up and put them in a journal.

These are some of the leftover hoarded and unfinished artwork that became book pages.
The center pages were part of a card I received from artist Jeanne Draachreider.

Recently an artist posted a journal she made that had a simple ring closure. So simple. So efficient. I loved it. I ran out to my local office supply store and snagged a package.

One of the problems with most bound journals is that once you start adding layers to a page, it gets fatter and fatter and eventually won't close. Often some of the back pages go unused because the journal just can't hold any more. Some people remove every other page, but that seems tedious and wasteful. A ring-bound flip journal seemed like a perfect solution to the "fat journal" problem.

 

First, I tried out the ring on my Index Card of the Day collection. I loved it. The cards flipped easily, and I could add and subtract pages without a problem. The cover was made of leftovers from a mermaid doll project.

I used some of Gwen's stencils in shades of blue and green as the base for the fins, and also used some of the embellishments from silk sari scraps plus a seahorse and starfish from the downloadable Stupendous Sea Life collection and a few Turkmen jewelry parts.

The dolls I made for my art doll trade group came out great too. Below are a few of them.

I wanted the turmeric journal to be a little more elegant than the Index Card of the Day flip book, so I decided to make the cover one continuous piece, with an inch or two for a spine, and have two rings. I got to work, cutting watercolor paper, smearing (with the side of an old credit card) matte medium on the paper, and layering the teabags. I was in my zone, working madly and happily like an elf at Christmas.

 

 

 

  

 

I especially liked the imperfections of the tea stains and the unevenness of the shapes where the teabags overlapped. I also liked the little snippets that were cut off so that the tea could be removed from the bag.

I criss-crossed the small strips on the book spine to enhance the rustic effect.

The wet spine of the book, with tea bag end strips forming loose crosses.

I left some of the pages with only the teabags. For others, I covered them with the geliplate prints and other small, unfinished artwork.

On some, I had to experiment with a new mandala stencil of Gwen's from the Boho Collection, and tried it several ways.

 

 

 

 

When everything was dry, I punched holes in the pages. For the holes on the front and back cover, I added some grommets for strength.

I tried out a some of Gwen's Fabulous Floral Embellished Trim on the cover as well as some of the German Dresden Trim, but they were too fancy with the utilitarian ring closure.

The sea-green and gold trim was pretty with the cover, but didn't work with the ring closure.

The Dresden Trim accent was gorgeous with the turmeric teabags, but the rings looked clunky next to it.

I loved the new mandala stencil so much I used it on the book cover with some of Seth Apter's Emerald Creek Radiant Rust embossing powder.

When I put all the pages together and attached the rings, it looked great. The circular design complimented the ring closure and the little grommets, and the warm rust effect went nicely with the turmeric's golden color.

 

So far, so good--but there was a problem. The journal didn't flip very well. The spine of the cover prevented the pages from laying flat, and the curve of the ring also inhibited the page-turning.

This page has a StencilGirl design by Andrea Matus DeMeng done in Deep Sea Baked Texture Embossing Powder.

This page has a StencilGirl design called Lacy Lotus, by Jessica Sporn.

The left page has a Damask design by Michelle Ward  printed on deli paper.

I tried some substitutes for the rings. A fiber closure was a fail. I tried some jewelry pins with wire twisted through both ends...also a fail. I tried taking apart a D-ring but the metal was too difficult to bend and even if I had been able to get the pages on the straight part of the ring, I wouldn't be able to open and close it.

 

 

I decided to go with function over beauty, and cut all my pages, as well as the cover and spine, apart. Now the pages flipped perfectly and the book would open completely and lay flat.

To finish, I dangled some of my favorite Turkmen jewelry parts on the rings. They go nicely with the rustic look of the turmeric teabags, and add a sweet, soothing tinkling sound. This just may be my new favorite journal!

The new journal, open flat, showing the back (left) and front (right)

A side view of the Turmeric Flip Journal

The finished Turmeric Flip Journal, with Turkmen jewelry parts dangling from the ring closures.

Hands Project



Finished right hand

Several years ago I traded small artwork regularly with a small group of artists. With life and career changes, we have not been in regular touch, but recently my friend Karen suggested an art trade based on our own hands.

The concept was to make a left hand that would be a shared project, and mailed around, with each person adding something to it, then mailing to the next person, then back to the original artist. For the right side, we would make three finished hands and mail them to each participant.

The hard part was deciding how to decorate my hands…bright and wild and graphic? Soft and subtle and girly? Earth tones? What kind of base? Textured or smooth?

I decided to go with some of my favorite colors and techniques, so I traced my hand on some hot press watercolor paper and got to work. I was thinking of two things: the henna hands that are painted on women from India for special occasions, and my favorite color (well, one of my favorite colors) turquoise.  For the shared project, I started with a stencil that was similar to the Indian henna designs and used molding paste through it to get texture and dimension. I painted it about ¾ with a light turquoise acrylic paint.

three finished hands

The idea for making the right hands did not come as easily. First, I set about covering the hot press watercolor paper with tea bags that I had dyed a delicious yellow, using skins from fresh turmeric, and then printed with assorted stamps using white printmaking paint. I experimented in my journal first, and it is a good thing I did: the UHU glue stick changed the color of the yellow to an orangey shade….whoops! I tried using gel medium, and that worked fine, with no color shift. The tea bags were smaller than the hand, so I had to piece them together and overlap, which left lines where I didn’t really want them.

Rather than try to disguise the join marks, I opted to enhance them. With the Japanese pottery technique called kintsugi/kintsukuroi, where broken items are mended by using gold to fill the cracks, thus enhancing the item’s beauty, I tried a twist on the method. Using painter’s tape, I carefully taped above and below the join mark, leaving it exposed. Then I painted the line turquoise, let it dry, and removed the tape. The blue line was a little too stark, so I used a white pen and added dots on the blue line.

Using the same stencil that I used on the left hand, along with part of an Artistcellar lace doily stencil, I applied copper InkaGold paint with a cosmetic sponge, then carefully removed the stencil. Voila, faux henna!

Each artist will add something to the left hand

The next addition was words, small words from Dina Wakely stamps, and my own words applied using tiny wooden alphabet stamps and a henna colored ink pad. The large, inspirational words are from Artistcellar’s pocketstencils. I outlined the word with a black ink pen, then carefully sponged chalk ink through the stencil. For the fingernails, a cheery sun spiral mini stamp, and just for fun and texture, a few copper-colored square metal brads. The finishing touch was edging the whole hand with a sepia ink.