Stencil Hop!

A few months ago, Julie Fei-Fan Balzer contacted me about participating in a blog hop featuring her new stencils. Well, of course!

The two stencils I used are called Clouds and Rain. I really enjoyed the open-ended design possibilites. 

The first thing I did was lay the rain stencil on a piece of muslin and trace around the raindrops with a turquoise sharpie. Then I hung the cloth and sprayed it with alcohol so that the marker lines blurred. When it was dry, I sandwiched the fabric with tissue, old book pages and glue.

Then out came the fusible web, an iron and some groovy fabrics picked up in Judy Gula's (Artistic Artifacts) booth at Art Is You. 

I cut out a whole bunch of raindrops/teardrops/feathers/leaves. Some of then wound up on an old black shirt that needed a facelift and some are on the paper cloth piece. I'm stiching away ...

The clouds were calling me next. I started out using the cloud stencil as a border around a journal page. I used Inktense pencils to trace the stencils and then Crayola markers to push the melting pencil around.

Ok. Not so happy with this so the gesso came out.

"Oh hey! are those little houses marching around a town square?" Yes, I thought so too. Time for pencil and watercolors.

I really enjoyed playing with Julie's new stencils. They are available at The Crafter's Workshop. There are a bunch of folks playing along in her blog hop today. You might enjoy having a look at some of their ideas and blogs. Here's the list for today!

Lori Vliegan
Bianca Mandity
Claudine Hellmuth
Kerry Lynn Yeary
Samantha Kira Harding
Mou Saha
Julie Fei-Fan Balzer 

Here are the clouds and rain stencils I used.

Thank you, Julie, for inviting me to play along!