October Voice for Stencil Girl Products

Hello – have you found me via the Stencil Girl blog?  I am so proud to have been chosen to be a Voice for the October Stencils, by Mary Beth Shaw. - which you can see announced here.

A little recap on me.  Primarily a creative stitcher, having stitched almost all my life – you will see at the top of this blog tabs to take you to the story of my formal qualifications in both Creative Embroidery and Paper Arts.  For me the two have made a very happy collision, as my preferred ‘fabric’ to stitch on is Paper… and I’d rather use paints than dyes.

Signing up for a monthly shipment of stencils from Stencil Girl Products has brought me oodles of happiness, the styles and inspiration are a good fit with me.  So, seeing the call for Voices, I thought give it a go.  I never dreamed I’d be chosen, being in the UK, and here I am,  having a play with the stencils for October.

I must admit I did play with all the stencils, and made lots of test runs and ideas….

So out came the Gelli Arts® plate and acrylic paints. a mix of Paper Artsy and Daler Rowney.

     Having played around with loads of ideas, the Gelli Arts® Plate had ghost images on it, from all the stencils.  So these became incorporated, rather pleasingly into this piece.

Using Two Plates  - on the larger I brayered three colours.  On the small I laid down the middle sized stencil and brayered through the ‘tulip’ shapes with black paint.  Removed the stencil.

Then I squished this Plate onto the larger, there is a mutual colour transfer. Colour across to the small, and black onto the larger.

I printed off the small Plate onto Cartridge paper.

Repeated this process two more times. So I ended up with this as an additional print.

I took the print from the larger Plate and ended up with the colour, the ghost images from previous printings, and ghostly ‘tulips’.

Added some of the pebble shapes to the bottom.  The piece was now screaming ‘flowers’ at me.

Using black thread and free machine (free motion) embroidery I stitched the flowers.  I didn’t draw these first, but used my machine needle to draw.  Adding in ‘flowers’ too.

Some more colour to the flower petals using Polychromos pencils, trimmed down and edged with a black machine stitch, to make a panel.

For this sample, I covered the plate in black paint, laid the large stencil on top.  Blotted off the black. (colour is from the unwashed stencil itself!)

Then I rollered (brayered) colours over the top.  Removed the stencil, and took a print on 160 gsm Cartridge Paper. (Not sure of the equivalent in US terms – but in the higher weights it’s a really good smooth paper for drawing/painting, but not of the heft of watercolour paper).

I fell in love with it, and decided to add more lines, by going over some of the black lines with a straight machine stitch, and filling in the coloured shapes with small hand straight stitching in colour matching silk threads.  Trimmed down and stitched around the edge, it became a rather pleasing panel, could easily become a book cover – but then I like looking at all the colours!

I love the effect of this kind of printing – so I made one in reverse – ie plate covered in colour, stencil, blot, roller on black paint, removed stencil and print.

I really enjoyed my challenge, so many ideas.  Please come back and see me again – especially as I have the November Stencils to share as well.

Thank you to Stencil Girl Products for this opportunity, I am so very thrilled to have been chosen, and I hope to have lived up to your expectations.

Thanks for looking.