I'm Grateful to be Participating in a Blog Hop Featuring Terri Stegmiller's StencilGirl Designs

It's time for another great StencilGirl Blog Hop, this time featuring Terri Stegmiller's designs and you guessed it, the theme is Grateful!

These days I'm grateful to have the honour of raising a future dog guide foster puppy.  He's been keeping me busy these days, so I wanted to create a journal page that I could doodle on, a little at a time, when I got the chance.

I used two of Terri's stencil designs: Waves and  Layered Salad.














Working in my 9" X 12" Strathmore Mixed Media Visual Journal, I started by tracing the Waves stencil using pencil. I often jump right in with pen, but this time I thought I'd lay everything out in pencil first, and then when I find time I'll do the pen work while listening to TV.

I added the quote by writing it between those wonderful lines created by the stencil.

 With the text in place, I reached for the Layered Salad stencil and filled in the empty spaces around the edges with whimsical flowers made using the various design elements in this stencil.

The next step was to use a permanent black pen (I like Microns and/or Pitt pens) to embellish the letters as I traced them in black, adding extra thickness and some tiny lines to fill in the fatter sections.

The rest of the pencil lines were also traced with the black pen.

 

And I'm ready for some paint.  I decided to use acrylic for this page.  I use a very fine brush and water down the paint so that it flows almost like watercolour paint.

After adding colour to all of the elements, mostly using some shimmery metallic paints, I pulled out a silver Pitt pen and added some shadows.

Don't you just love that wonderful quote by Marcel Proust?!

There's a giveaway on the StencilGirl Talk Blog and 

all comments left on the ENTIRE hop 

are eligible to be picked as the winning comment. 

Giveaway will close on Sunday, November 24th at 11:59PM Central Time.

Blog Hop Order

StencilGirl Talk

Terri Stegmiller

Linda Kittmer-you're here...thanks for coming!

Kirsten Reed is your next stop on the hop.

Marjie Kemper

Janet Joehlin

Judy Shea

Linda Cain

Corrine Gilman

Leslie Tucker Jenison

Mary C. Nasser

A Blog Hop Featuring StencilGirl Stencils Designed by Jane LaFazio...

Eucalyptus

Pods

Hi Everyone!  Today I'm participating in another fabulous StencilGirl blog hop, this time featuring designs by Jane LaFazio.  I'm using her Eucalyptus stencil and her Pods stencil to create a journal page.

 

I started by drawing a simple frame around my journal page with a permanent black pen.  Then I started tracing some of the elements of the pods stencil within the border, and sometime allowing parts to extend outside of the border.

I then penciled in a quote by Henry Ward Beecher about Gratitude...did I mention that was the theme of the hop?  I like to pencil in my text before tracing it with permanent pen, just in case I mess up on spacing or such.

Time to pick up the other stencil (Eucalyptus) to trace the 'circle' images, this time using a red permanent pen.   I then added some doodles to turn those into flowers.

 Using my Tombow markers, I added colour.  On the stencilled areas, I brushed in colour (using the brush end) right on the page.  For other areas I put down some colour on the stencil plastic and then add a drop of water with the water brush before laying it down on the page.

 

I used this technique for the blue background areas as well as the little dotted flowers seen in this next image.




I also used the water brush to activate the Tombow colours in the stencil areas to achieve the watercolour effect.

 Back to my permanent black pen, I doodled stripes onto the border I made in the first step.

And here's the finished page (And yes, I'm also grateful for being able to ignore the drab November weather and create colourful gardens any time of year!):

StencilGirl Products is giving away a prize on their blog StencilGirl Talk. ALL comments left on ALL blogs are eligible to win. The more blogs you leave comments on, the more chances you will have to be the lucky winner! 

The giveaway will close on Monday, November 11, 2013 @ 11:59 PM Central Time.

Here's the Blog Hop order...happy hopping!

StencilGirl Talk

Jane LaFazio

Mary Beth Shaw

Linda Kittmer-You are here.

Jenny Lee Cochran-Hop on over here next!

Kirsten Reed

Janet Joehlin

Corrine Gilman

Helen Shafer Garcia

Leslie Tucker Jenison

Ruth de Vos

Deborah Boschert

Julie Snidle

Mary C. Nasser