Thursday Theme: Stencil Madness!

So, since this is my blog and I make the rules, I feel compelled to say that sometimes, Thursday's Theme will be quite general, which means that some themes may repeat over time.  It's always worth revisiting themes from time to time anyway, because at different times you might see the same thing differently and do something different with it.  As an example, I've recently been playing with stencils (and masks) more because I've been getting more of Michelle Ward's fabulous stencils.  But the way I use them has been evolving a little bit, and I'm starting to play with new ideas.  So here's a brief tour of some of the things you can do with stencils, starting with some older work.

Way back, I started with one of Michelle's Street Team Crusades, where she encouraged us to cut our own stencils and masks.  Not one to ever start with something easy, I did this:

It's a lion mask within a lion stencil within a shield mask.

 

 



I used it in the traditional way, pouncing paint through it and around it, which was cool but very static.  And then I didn't do much with stencils for a long while.  I occasionally used masks with my inks and sprays, but not a whole lot.  I did a couple of things with paint, trying to use Michelle's drybrushing techniques and usually ending up with too much paint, like this:

 

 

 

 

Last Summer I got to take two fabulous classes with Michelle.  And we did a lot with her new stencils, and we cut our own.  And I was hooked.  The techniques I had tried to learn from her blog finally clicked. 

 

 

 And once I came home, I decided to experiment a little more with layering and monoprinting with the painty side of the stencil, and that's how I did this:

The coolest part of this was painting a gray background and laying a stencil over it, then wiping through the stencil with a damp paper towel.  That's how I got the lightest crosses.  It's actually the blank canvas showing through.

 

I've gotten more adventurous with my experiments, hence the messy mushroom canvas and the Halloween tags:

 

Big mushroom masks cut from manila folders, layered with Michelle's quatrefoil stencil for spots.

Laid down a background, embossed through the stencil with clear embossing powder, and then darkened the tag, which the embossing resisted.

And Christmas was a great opportunity to use portions of stencils, and layer inks and sprays through them:

 

But all this time, I've been forgetting something that Michelle taught us in the classes.  You can still draw through stencils.  Remember when you were a kid, and you learned how to use stencils, and you traced the shapes through them?  Or was that just me?  Anyway, that's still a perfectly good way to use a stencil.  So in the previous post you saw Mom's gift tag, where I started to remember that.  This week, I spent some time with some stencils, a pencil, a Micron pen, and two Sharpies.  Here are my experiments.  I like the third one best.

 

 

 

What's cool is, it was a really simple way to test some layering ideas, and now I have some patterns that I can translate into ink or paint and still retain as much or as little of the pencil/pen/marker features as I want.  The hash mark fill-in from the first one of these was kind of fun, and I can see where that might be useful in some compositions.  But I loved mixing some filled in spaces with some outlined spaces like in the second and third photos.  There's lots to play with here, and I have the feeling that the more I play, the more I'll discover.

 

When's the last time you played with stencils?  Do you have some particular favorites?  Do  you make your own, or purchase them, or both?

Thursday Special

We interrupt this Thursday's Theme with a special message.  Today is a special day.  This day, January 3, is my Mom's birthday.  Happy birthday, Mom! *throws confetti*

At this point, we've been to dinner, given her presents, and rolled home.  But I still had a blog post to write, and I want to dedicate it to her.  Don't worry, there will be closeups of that tag up there.  Patience, pocket padawans.

I want this blog post to be about my very awesome Mom because without her, I might not be the artist I am.  With a different Mom, I probably wouldn't know how to sew, or knit, or crochet, or sort-of-but-not-really-well-so-I-don't-bother cross stitch.  I might not have gotten into stamping or mixed media.  I might still be artistic, but would probably have stuck to traditional 2-dimensional art forms.  And that's great, and I love sketching, but there is so much more to unlock. 

My Mom is super creative.  She didn't really know it until she married and moved away from home, but she has always been an artist and had a particular eye for color.  She started with embroidery and moved on to all kinds of fiber arts, from regular sewing to quilting, and crochet to knitting, and from sewing and quilting and knitting to wearable art and beading.  She loves papers and ephemera; we used to read Victoria magazine together and she started buying Somerset Studio when I was in middle school.  As a kid, spending time with my Mom, I was surrounded with all this stuff and I wanted to play with it all.  So she taught me, and encouraged me, and told me I had a talent.  She was always so adventurous with art and that encouraged me to be so too.  And we always had fun, whether taking a class together or just putzing around in the basement with fabric or yarn or stamps.  She gave me my own space in the sewing room, and when I outgrew having a play room, we turned that side of the basement into a "studio."  We designed a yarn room together when my brother's old room became the new guest room and the old guest room was suddenly available (and our combined yarn stashes threatened to take over the house otherwise).  And now, even though I have my own place and my own supplies, I still go back home to play with Mom and share tools and ideas.  She'll show me what she's been working on - nowadays it's usually either new tags with cool techniques she's been experimenting with or bead and metal jewelry that she's designing and making with her ever-growing arsenal of metalworking tools - and we'll have some tea and talk about what we want to do next or what's been inspiring us.

The best times, I think, are when you can just be friends with your Mom.  And creativity has always given us a place to be friends. 

Well, after writing all that, the tag will seem awfully simple.  But it was really fun to make, and Mom liked it, so I guess that's all that matters.

Here's what I used:

(The stencils are, of course, by Michelle Ward.)

Here's what I did with them:

Happy birthday, Mom!

Thursday Theme: Brown Paper Packages Tied Up With String

Less with the string, more with the brown paper.  But still.

Merry Christmas!

Okay so I'm a couple days late, but it is still the Christmas season until January 6th, so merry Christmas anyway.  I hope you had a good one, whatever you were doing.  Mine was great, and though I had absolutely nothing to show last week (I had been doing some sketching but that will show up later), I have two days' worth of gift wrapping to show this week.  Yep, it took me two full days to wrap gifts in my usual brown kraft paper.  Normally it wouldn't have, but this year instead of doing a tag for each box, I had the brilliant brainwave to decorate the paper itself.  Still not really sure why I do these things to myself.  And I put clues on all of Mr. Pocket's gifts (though some were kind of a stretch).  Anyway, this is going to be a VERY picture-heavy post, especially since I went a little overboard for Mr. Pocket.  Here we go!

This was a mug and some tea for Mr. Pocket to take to work.

Pajamas, something I'm making a tradition.

Custom Achievement Hunter t-shirt with his XBox gamertag on it.

Socks.  Yeah, I know.  He always wants socks for Christmas.

Cut the Rope boxers.  Om Nom is green.

Lego Lord of the Rings for the XBox.  Santa's helpers are elves, and there are lots of elves in Middle Earth.  I know, kind of a stretch.

Next, two gifts for Pocket Papa (my dad):

 

 

And for Mom:

 

 

These were for my brother and my sister-in-law:

And then finally, a gift card tag and a plain tag for my brother-in-law and my mother-in-law.

I had so much fun doing all of this, but I think next  year I will probably go back to tags for the boxes rather than decorating the paper itself.  It took five forevers.  Or, you know, two days.  Perhaps if I hadn't been so type A and wrapped the paper around the boxes first to get creases in the right places to guide where I had to decorate and then decorated the paper and then wrapped it back on the boxes, it wouldn't have taken so long.  But it also wouldn't have looked as good, and I wouldn't have been satisfied. 

I hope the post-holiday letdown isn't too bad, and that you have good plans for New Year's.  We're taking it easy this year and staying home.  Looking forward to a better year to come!

What I used:
Stencils:  by Michelle Ward
Stamps:  by Tim Holtz for Stampers Anonymous, by Inkadinkado (the adorable birds), by HeroArts, and I don't have the label anymore for the letter stamps but I got them at Michael's and I think they were Recollections (maybe)
Die Cuts:  Sizzix by Tim Holtz, and some random holly leaves that Mom had gotten at Michael's.  Cut from Core'dinations and some random gold and silver cardstock we've had for a few years, probably Recollections because I know I got it at Michael's
Inks:  Distress Inks by Tim Holtz for Ranger, some random gold and silver pigment ink that Mom had, and Tsukineko embossing ink
Embossing Powders:  I think they were all Stampendous
Sprays:  Perfect Pearls and Tattered Angels mists

Thursday Theme: Evergreen

Been a little more artsy this week.  Yay!  With an unexpected twist.  See, a couple weeks ago, I had cut a bunch of tags out of plain white watercolor paper with a torn bottom edge, planning to do a lot of white backgrounds with simple motifs.  But... best laid plans of mice.  You know.

Green happened.

More specifically, Iced Spruce, Evergreen Bough, and Pine Needles in the Distress line happened. 

I blame Mom.

But it's okay, because I really didn't know what I was going to do with all my pristine white tags, but then I started playing with Mom's Distress Stains and Perfect Pearls, and the next thing I knew, I had a whole theme for this week.

All of these backgrounds were done using Distress Inks or Stains in various combinations of the above listed colors and Perfect Pearls mists in Heirloom Gold and Biscotti, using the wrinkle-free distress technique, which is my current favorite way to do a background.

Here I used that embossing powder resist technique that I used on the last acorn tag.

I used the Fabulous Flourish stamp from Hero Arts.

Even with the embossing powder melted off, you can see where the ink pooled in the curls.  I love it.

This one shows more blue than green, but I promise, it's the same inks.

I also had some fun with my Michelle Ward stencils and some gold Liquitex Heavy Body Acrylic.

 

This is actually a monoprint off of the Maltese Small stencil after using it on another ATC.

And since green makes me think of trees, and Winter makes me think of evergreen trees, I played with some tree motifs, too.

Tim Holtz tissue tape gives me my strong vertical here.  The trees were cut out with a new Tim Holtz die that does a pine tree border...

...and I coated them with embossing ink and used copper embossing powder on them.  Look how the torn edge soaked up that ink.  Yum.

I decided that rather than let the back be messy, I'd just ink that, too.

Finally, a new insert for my clear iPhone case.  Just the Iced Spruce ink and Biscotti Perfect Pearls for the background, with Tim Holtz stamps and tissue tape.

 

So much for my white backrounds.  Although I do have one project in mind that will be all white backgrounds.  But green really has caught hold of me this year.  Is there a particular color that you find yourself using predominantly this year?

Exce11ence: Or, It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

WOOOOOO!!!

Around here, there's a very special event that marks the beginning of the Christmas season.  It is perhaps more important than Santa's arrival at Harold Square (Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, for those unfamiliar).  For my family, this event takes the place of the common Christmas party.  It is an event steeped in tradition, with ups and downs and lots of yelling, singing, nail-biting, and beer consumption.  It is... the Army-Navy football game.

Yes, folks, we are a Navy family.  My dad went to the Naval Academy and was a P-3 pilot and flight instructor.  Most of our family friends are Navy folks, too, and we're very close.  So every year, my parents host a small get-together with what I call my "Navy family" to watch the year's most important football game.  There's always lots of food, lots of noise, and LOTS of blue and gold :)

The friend in the blue chair is wearing his bathrobe from the Academy - it has faded from navy blue to purple.  That's my dad and Mr. Pocket on the couch.

 

Proudly sporting my Navy jersey - not as spiff as the game jerseys they had on today though.

 

Like I said - FOOD!

I made mulled white wine this year.  Yum!

 



 

It was a close game, and one that meant a lot.  Army-Navy always means a lot, being a sort of brotherly rivalry, and one that's really important to the cadets and the midshipmen.  This year, the mids were trying to keep up their winning streak to make this their 11th straight win against Army - coining the tagline "Exce11ence."  Army was fighting to get their first win against Navy since 2001.  And for both teams, winning meant taking home the Commander-in-Chief's Trophy, awarded each year to whichever service academy defeats both of the others in football - and both Army and Navy defeated Air Force this season (yay!).  In the end, Navy squeaked out a win, taking home the Commander-in-Chief's Trophy and their 11th win.  And for me and my family, the Christmas season can now begin in earnest, and it begins with the gift of Exce11ence :)

Thursday Theme: Decking the Halls

Very brief post again.  Haven't had much art time, and I haven't even fully decorated for Christmas yet.  But I do have some decorations up, and there is somewhat of a theme.  It sort of revolves around childhood.  So far, I've got this shelf:

Obviously childlike, with the toy theme going on.  And teddy bears are dear to me.  But the rest of what I have up is probably not so obviously related to childhood.  It is, however, very related to my childhood. 

Mom and I used to read this magazine together all the time, and it still is my favorite:

Every month, when it came in, we'd wait til bedtime, and then I'd sit on Mom's bed with her and we'd page through the new issue.  The Christmas issue was always our favorite.  Now, quite a bit of my taste in Christmas decorations leans toward the Victorian.  Like these:

I love these cones.  I think I got them from Victorian Trading Co. but I don't remember.  The holly and pinecones are just floral picks from Michael's.  Nothing special.  But I like hanging these from the bottom shelf's brackets.  It just makes it that much more festive.

Next week I should have more to show, although the coming week is going to be hyper busy.  In the meantime, pocketeers, what do you most love to decorate with at this time of year?  Even if you don't celebrate Christmas, it's a change of season, which ushers in all kinds of fantastic new motifs to take the place of Fall harvest imagery.