At Your Fingertips: Organizing Your Stamps & Stencils!

"When you start recognizing that you're having fun, life can be delightful." 

- Jane Birkin

Helllllooooo! 

I hope this finds you happy, well and hopefully, with your hands covered in some sort of fabulous neon paint. . . .

Speaking of paint - and neon - I played with a bit (or okay, a lot) of both for the above project that was filmed for the new Jessica Sporn Designs Creative Team. 

Just pop over HERE to watch the video and help us celebrate the beginning of what I know will be a throughly delightful year.

Kristin xo

Stencil Test Drive with Jessica Sporn

Can you see me dancing? I look fabulous, by the way, as I jump up and down clapping my hands in frenzied excitement. . . . 

Okay, so it may not be the prettiest thing to see, but the excitement is genuine as I. Am. Thrilled to be participating in Jessica Sporn's Test Drive for one of her newest Stencil Girl products; Frames!

It felt like my birthday when I received the elegant 9 x 12 stencil in the mail, and I've been playing with it like a toddler with a new toy ever since. But I digress. Wanna see what I did with it? Okay then, here goes:

Journaling with Frames

My first play date with the stencil was with my journal. I used the oval frame in the set as a central element on the left of the spread and then used a piece of another (turned upside down) to represent a necklace on the right. Wait, here's a better shot of the oval:

Gel pen, molding paste, silver leaf and Stickles glitter

I began by placing the stencil on the page and simply colored in the exposed areas with an iridescent gel pen. I then off set it a bit and pushed molding paste through the same stencil. Before it dried completely, I applied silver leaf to the surface and then waited (impatiently) for it to finish drying. I loved the raised look it gave me and decided to finish it off with a few smudges of silver Stickles glitter.

Frames Banner

  

But I wasn't done there. I really wanted to do something that showed the variety of the stencil, so I decided to take some 4 x 6 pieces of painted cardboard I had in my stash and create a banner of sorts using all of the frames in the set. Since I'm a Mother Goose fan, some of those vintage images made their way to the party as well. Here's a close up of each piece of the puzzle, all of which were created with a mixture of molding paste and black fluid acrylic paint:

A portion of the rectangle frame (shown in the green piece above) was masked off to create a "door" and another stencil in the set was used to create a "roof". 

Each were highlighted with iridescent Stickles glitter for movement and depth.

Rounded Rectangle Frame

Oval Frame 

(this is the same stencil used in the journal above)

Square Frame

Rectangle Frame

And there you have it! I loved my play date with Jessica's Frames and look forward to using the beautiful stencil set again and again. Thank you Jessica for your support and generosity! 

Oh but wait! You can win one too! Here's the deal:

Now go see what the other artists did with the Frames stencil! But before you do, be sure to leave a comment here because Jessica is giving away a Frames stencil to one lucky winner, and EVERY comment in the test drive will be eligible to win. The more times you comment, the more chances you have to win!

Comment by Midnight, EST 10/13/2013

So go check them out! Here are all of the artists participating in this week's Stencil Test Drive:

Linda Kunsman

Maria McGuire

Nathalie Kalbach

Anita Houston

Janet Joehlin

Valerie-Jael

Jessica Sporn

Have fun and good luck! 

The giveaway is now closed. Thank you for taking the drive with us . . . xo!

(Happily linking to Paint Party Friday too!)

Kristin xo

Paint Party Friday: Lil' Cardboard Collages

Happy PPF!

I hope this week found you with paint under your fingernails at some point . . . Mine were definitely encrusted with acrylics, gouache, glue, gloss medium, fiber paste, varnishes and (naturally) glitter for days. It was a case of peeling fingers for sure. You know, you've been there . . . .

But I digress: this week I was influenced by the lovely (darling & delightful) Mindy Lacefield after watching several of her You Tube videos. It was this one that really got me: watching her paint several little cardboard paintings at once. So excited I was, that I cut up the next box I got my hands on and went to work. My pieces took some different turns, but I'm so grateful to have had the impetuous to try something fun and new. Thank you Love Bug, for the beautiful inspiration!

Wanna see what I came up with? Okay:

4 little cardboard collages, all lined up in a row.

(Each one measures approximately 5.5 x 11)

They were first cut, pulled to reveal texture and then gessoed

Elements such as vintage playing cards and game pieces were added

Stencils served as the base, with some molding paste mixed with paint 

to create some raised areas

This one included a face - behind chicken wire that was adhered with E600 and beeswax

And here we have a little pocket that housed vintage tickets

They are hung with decorative wire and grommets

And finished off with decorative (and painted on) trim

That's it. Thanks for letting me share and thank you to Kristin and Eva for another opportunity to play with paint.

Have a fabulous weekend,

Kristin xo

The Summer of Color: BLUE

"The Wishing Well"

8 x 10 Journal loose-leaf page

Can we talk?

Before we go any further, I want to extend my sincere thanks and gratitude for the tremendous response we have had for this event. I'm blown away by the amount of participants joining The Summer of Color and am honored by your excitement and enthusiasm. It looks like we're in for a fabulous Summer of creating, community and connection.  . . 

What's everyone doing?

Last week's challenge was to tell us what you are planning to create during the event. It seems that the freedom to do anything you want was very popular and because of that, we have an amazing assortment of art and inspiration to look forward to. In case you're curious, the majority of us will be doing some sort of art journaling, followed closely by ATC's, color inspiration / altered books and scrapbooking. There will also be some doing canvas work, cards, collages, altered objects, illustrations and/or sketchbooks, digital art and photography. A few are planning to work with fabric or felting and we even have a poet, jewelry artist, one who restores furniture and an artist working on fairies. We will be seeing work with teabag paper (how cool is that?), oils and of course, some who will be doing a little bit of everything. I'm so looking forward to learning from all of you - thanks again for sharing your talents with us all . . .

A little bit of business:

In all of the excitement of the opening week, there were a few of us who got started on their artwork a little early (so we've had a sneak peek of some beautiful work ;). If you linked up with blue on last week's post, I would be so grateful if you would link it again this week. Those who wrote about their plans for the event qualified for last week's giveaway, which was the assortment of art supplies. Because the first week was a little tricky to decipher, I selected the winner by randomly drawing a name out of a hat (okay, bowl) and checked to make sure she had met the first week's requirements. From next week on, I will use a random number generator from the comments section. This will make more sense when it comes time for bonus weeks, when you are able to enter twice should you complete the bonus challenge. So, the linking is for us to easily find one another and the comments are to sign up for the giveaway. Lastly, you will always know a week ahead of time what your next color challenge will be. That way, you have time to plan and prepare your work.  . . 

Okay, okay, so who won?

Drawing for last week's giveaway of art supplies

Congratulations! The winner of the assortment of art supplies from last week's drawing (pictured in the post below) is: You! Please email me your address and I will get it out right away.

Now, welcome to Blue week!

As of today (from Monday the 13th to Sunday the 19th), you may post your artwork based upon the color Blue. To do so, please share your piece on your blog with a link back here (so that others can find us) and then link your direct post to the linking widget below. To enter the blue giveaway, please leave a comment in the comment section.

The Blue giveaway for the week is . . .

Large Martha Stewart fine glitter in turquoise, 2 bottles of Martha Stewart flocking powder in Robin's Egg and Turquoise, a Martha Stewart ballpoint tip glue pen (and believe me, you want this ;) and a sprinkling of pale blue, clear and iridescent Swarovski crystals and beads. 

Also:

Please feel free to share your work on our Facebook page and our Flickr group which you can always find on the sidebar here . . .

And what will we be working on next week (from Monday the 20th to Sunday the 26th)? 

Green!

"Green is the prime color of the world, and that from which it's loveliness arises." 

- Pedro Calderon de la Barca

Bonus! 

For Green week, your bonus challenge (for a chance to be entered twice in the Green giveaway) will be to incorporate the color Citron in your piece. Have fun . . .

Kristin xo

SPA: Hobbies & Pastimes

"She Liked to Play with Glitter"

6 X 4 corrugated cardboard

This week's theme for Sunday Postcard Art is Hobbies or Pastimes. I thought I'd have a go at the challenge (I'm a newbie to SPA) and create a girlie-girl whose hobby is to play with glitter (It's a stretch, I know) . . .

This piece was created on a 6 x 4 cutout of corrugated cardboard which was ripped, gessoed and washed with iridescent glitter and pale pink water-soluble wax pastels. The edges were further distressed with the back of a knife and then stamped with a swirl stamp before adding (silver Stickles) glitter. The girl was made on watercolor paper with acrylics, gel pens and Caran d'Ache crayons before being cut out and added to the background. Her paint pallet is comprised of globs of glitter. Final touches include more Stickles glitter on the dress and a dot on the whites of her eyes.

Thanks for looking! I look forward to seeing what everyone else does this week. . .

Kristin xo