Five Bold Flowers Journal Page

Hello creative friends! Nicole here with a question. What do you create when you have a bunch of new stencils and want to play with them all? How do you even decide where to start? Easy answer! It doesn’t matter where you start, because you play with them all!

 

For this week’s project, I’m layering five stencils and then calming the chaos with a little reductive painting using, of course, another stencil! 

I grabbed my journal to find one of few blank pages left, and decided on one that is next to a project I created for Nathalie Kalbach’s creative team. Nathalie is also a StencilGirl® designer, so I thought it would be fun to incorporate some of her stencils on the page next door, plus a couple others. I used the finished page as inspiration for the new page I was about to create.

 

After gessoing the page, I layered it with a ledger sheet. I knew that I wanted this page to have cream with white in the background plus use the color palette of its neighbor. So, I grabbed my gesso to add some white to the ledger sheet. 

Next, I picked out the colors that matched the page next door. I even grabbed pink to match the embroidery floss. I knew I’d need a lot of colors for the stencils! I didn't use all of them, but they were ready just in case.

Once the gesso was dry, I began to layer the stencils. I used the same process for each one. First, I stenciled it with a foam applicator a few places on the page and then I distressed my stenciling a bit with some water and watered-down paint.

 

First Layer: Van Vorst 

I ended up adding more of this stencil after the third layer.

 

Second Layer: Arched Fountains 

Third Layer: What’s the Point? 

After this layer dried, I also traced around the circles with stabilo all in graphite and black to add a bit more interest.

Fourth Layer: Hash Marks 

 

Fifth Layer: Alpha Drips 

For this stencil, I cut my applicator foam in half so I could isolate the plus symbols only in the stencil.

Fun side note: I started using an old book to clean off my stencils and applicator. After each stencil, I cleaned it several times in this book. It's going to make a great book of ephemera!

When all my layers were dry, I grabbed the Bold Flowers stencil to calm the incredible chaos I created. This stencil was the perfect contrast to the facing page, so I knew I just had to use it! The large, bold image contrasted the delicate details of the right side and the flower petals matched the stamped crowns I gave the photos. The page on the right is about my crazy dreams, and these bold flowers look like something from a dream, too!

 

The stencil and mask combo is perfect for reductive painting. I used the stencil to see exactly what part of the page I wanted to keep and then put the mask inside and removed the stencil. I grabbed my foam applicator and spread black paint around the mask.

Before the paint dried, I touched it up by filling it in, distressing some, removing some, and adding more. It’s a bit of a process, but the end results are worth it.

Then, I repeated the process with a smaller flower.

Once both images were finished, I grabbed a baby wipe and some cleaning paste to distress the black and the page even more. The paste removed some of the black and some of the stenciling layers, too. Not completely, just enough that it looked like it maybe was an old fresco on a wall, worn from time. I absolutely loved the result. 

I also added a little extra black around the edges of the pages.

Then, I repeated the process on a few tags. If I was doing this again, I would have played on the tags at the same time as the journal pages. So, don't copy my order!

After the stenciled layers were dry, I added a flower to each one using the same process. On two I used the stencil and on the smaller one the mask.

Finally, I layered the tags, stuck them down with clear washi tape on the ends so they'd flip on the page, added a vintage photo and a saying and called it done!

You can watch the entire process in the video below.

 

Thanks for following along!

-Nicole

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Stencils

Van Vorst 

Arched Fountains 

What’s the Point? 

Hash Marks 

Alpha Drips 

Bold Flowers

Supplies

• Dina Wakley Media Journal
• Ledger Paper
• Golden So Flat (black, naphthol pink, turquoise, cobalt teal, fluorescent orange)
• Golden Fluid (payne's gray, iridescent bronze fine)
• Stabilo All (black, graphite)
• Gesso
• Matte Medium
• Tags
• Baby Wipes
• Cleaning Paste
• Clear Washi Tape
• Phrase Stickers
• Vintage Photo
• Three different size tags

The Suprise Inside

         

The Faberge Eggs

 

 

  For three decades - from 1885 until the Russian Revolution - the imperial jeweler, Peter Carl Faberge, produced the now-famous Faberge Imperial Eggs as Easter gifts from the Tsar to his wife and his mother. With each passing year, these bejeweled masterpieces became more and more elaborate, inventive, and breathtaking.  Each egg took at least one year to create - sometimes two! - with an entire team bringing a suite a skills to the task, from watchmakers to enamelists, gem cutters to goldsmiths and more. When the Romanov family fled from the Bolsheviks in 1916, the collection of fifty magnificent eggs was left behind in the palace, where they were subsequently looted in the chaos.  Some were lost, possibly destroyed, many ended up in private collections, and the rest are on display in St. Petersburg. 

Some of the Imperial Eggs from the workshop of Faberge

   

An example of the ornate "surprise inside" that was standard on most of the eggs

             Each egg is very different from the previous egg, since Faberge intended to outdo himself each time, both in design and fabrication.  But one thing that almost all have in common is that they open up and contain a surprise, and it all began with the simplest egg of all, known as the Golden Hen Egg.  This first of the Imperial Eggs has a simple, white enamel shell, and opens to reveal a golden yolk, which then opens to reveal a golden hen.  I took this elegant masterpiece as my inspiration for my project, a sweet little Easter gift.

The Golden Hen Egg, the first of the Imperial Eggs

             Tracie Lyn Huskamp has designed two 6x6 stencils of speckled eggs for StencilGirl® Products:  S021 Speckled Eggs has two larger eggs on it, and I used the larger of those two eggs to trace out onto a pale green cardboard.  I cut out two, and used the speckle patterns to add brown and blue splotches on both sides. A couple of sprinkles of white paint gave them a little more brightness. I then cut narrow strips of the same cardboard (one narrower than the other) and cut them to match the perimeter of the eggs, softened the fibers by curling the strips around the edge of my desk, and then glued them in place with PVA glue to make a little box with a snug-fitting lid.

 

 

 

            Now I had a little speckled egg box.  But what could the surprise inside be?  It had to be something more than just a little candy or a message.  Could I somehow replicate the golden yolk or golden hen?  And then I remembered my bird guts!  Stencil guts are sometimes available from StencilGirl® Products, and at one point when a set of “bird guts” was available I put them right into my shopping cart without delay (and you should not delay either if you see them make another appearance).  These guts are the mylar scraps left over from the stencil cutting process.  Tracie Lyn Huskamp also has a 6x6 Songbirds stencil S034, and I had some of the birds that were the by-products of cutting that stencil.  A little bit of gold leaf, and I had a golden bird!   All that remained was to add some white jelly beans, and I had a perfect little gift to send to my daughter.  (Full disclosure: I did snip off the bird’s tail so it would fit inside the box!)

Adding gold leaf to the bird

            This is my last Master Pieces column.  I’ve really enjoyed researching the artists and using them as inspiration for my own art exploration.  I hope you have enjoyed reading these columns as much as I enjoyed writing them!  If you want to see any more of my art going forward, feel free to look at my Instagram @jennitoga.

Eggs Speckled Stencil by Tracie Lyn Huskamp

    

Guest Designer Frieda Oxenham

In essence is printing on fabric using a gelli plate exactly the same as printing on paper. In this case I’m using dedicated fabric paint as it’s much easier to stitch through than acrylics and also makes the end product washable. My fabric paints are Opaques and Metallics by Colourcraft and I’m printing on silk.

1.     Add a mix of colours to your gelli plate (8 x 10”) and take prints. Add one colour to your gelli plate and add a stencil on top, take a print on your printed fabrics. Remove stencil and take another print. Overprint on some of your fabrics if you like. I used the following stencils: L301 Circles Circles, L320 Batik, the large stencils of the June 2020 StencilClub, the January 2017 Club, the October 2014 Club and the August 2015 Club.

2.     Cut all your fabrics into 1” wide strips. I used a rotary cutter and cutting mat. You can also use scissors.

3.     Cut the strips into approx. 1” squares. I do this step freehand, without a ruler.

4.     Sew the squares together using a sewing machine and chain piecing i.e. sew one pair together, then without lifting the needle the following pair etc. Press the seams open with an iron. Then sew the pairs together into fours, then eights etc, till you have a long strip of sewn together squares.

5.     Select your background. I used black wool felt and alternated between black fabric and my pieced squares. Put a small strip of black fabric (also 1” wide) to the centre of the wool felt. Tack it down if you like. Then sew a length of your pieced squares to opposite sides of the black fabric.

I did the vertical strips first, then the horizontal strips, so that the black strip is enclosed by the pieced squares strips. This is improv quilting so I am not aiming for straight lines in this case although you can if you like.  Repeat the sequence with black fabric strips. This pattern is known as Courthouse Steps.

Repeat until your black felt background is covered up. I like to tack my strips down before sewing on another strip but that’s an optional step. It takes more time but makes the sewing easier.

6.     Once finished hand stitch the piece with black running stitch on the black fabric strips and a variegated thread on the coloured strips.

7.     Sew on gold beads along the edges of the coloured strips.

8.     Use another of your painted fabrics from step 1 and iron on a piece of Bondaweb (WonderUnder) to the back of it. Using stencil S298 Deconstructed Single Lily Mask and Stencil and mark it out on the Bondaweb. 

Cut out the flower and mark the pattern of the lily on the front with a permanent black marker and outline the pattern with black hand stitching.

9.     Add black binding around the quilt

10.  Add the lily from step 8 to the quilt and stitch it down using buttonhole stitch and a variegated thread. Outline the lily with gold beads and also add beads to the centre of the flower.

© Frieda Oxenham 2024