Stencils!

I've come to love stenciling, with all the various techniques that can be done with these versatile tools, and recently had occasion to purchase some wonderful stencils made by The Crafter's Workshop, at Scrapbook Centrale in Montreal.  So I was happy to see three challenges for stencil use!

This is a photo-heavy post for my own archives, so please feel free to breeze through!

Since I wanted to skid in at the last minute to the Country View Challenge "Shabby Chic",  I went with the doily and vintage themes.

Because my base stencil is very large, I decided to work on a jumbo tag for a change.  I built up my color first, by applying Distress Ink from lights to darks in the blue range:  Tumbled Glass, Broken China and Faded Jeans.

I spritzed with water and then thoroughly dried, doing this several times.




















I then stenciled with clear gesso using a cosmetic sponge, and when dry, sprayed with Ranger Color Wash in Denim.  I let this dry, and then wiped with a semi-dry baby wipe.

I stenciled on a trio of grungy little butterflies, again from The Crafter's Workshop, using Lumiere Metallic Rust paint, again with a cosmetic sponge.

In keeping with the rust/brown colors, I sprayed some seam binding with Lindy's Stamp Gang Coco Bean Copper, along with their Long John Silver spray to add some lighter areas; I used this last color also to spray some small BoBunny doilies.  When dry, I twisted these for a bit of interest.

To go with the ribbon and doilies, I spritzed up some pre-made Kaisercraft roses from my stash with the same Coco Bean Copper and Long John Silver sprays, this time adding just a bit of Lindy's Bayou Boogie Gold as well.

I pulled out a scrap of coffee filter that had been sprayed with a variety of metallic sprays for a previous make, and cut it with a sweet half-doily die.

The final embellishment was a grunge board key I had cut a long time ago from a die, with lots of repeated applications of aged silver embossing powder to get a metallic look.  To match this color scheme, I dabbed the key with some Treasure Gold in Copper, and then swiped on some black acrylic paint, and wiped that off again with a dry baby wipe after about a minute.

The final bit was to add some script stamping, using black archival ink - I think this came out rather too dark, but too late now!  If doing again, I would use Coffee or Wendy Vecchi's Potted Soil.

And here is the final tag, with some close up shots of the embellishments.....

Thank you so much for stopping by!  And if you've time, please leave a comment - I always love to hear your thoughts!  xx Lynn

I will be adding this to the Shabby Chic challenge at CountryView Challenges, the Crafter's Workshop Stencil Challenge at Artistic Trading Post, the current topic "Stencils" at PaperArtsy, and at Brenda's visual journey once the new month opens up.