Four Brand-New Stencils Released Today!

I'm happy to introduce 4 new 6" x 6" stencils:

s462 Ornamental Iron Curls 

s463 Ski-Lift Works

s464 Pavilion Shadows 6x6

s465 Sassy Spray 

I'll be posting daily about these four new stencils, sometimes showing all four of them used together in artworks, sometimes showing them used in pairs, and sometimes showing them used individually.

Today I'm focusing on using them in pairs -- combining them with a masking trick that I first learned way back when I was designing rubber stamps and using those stamps.

For this technique I used heavy-body acrylic paints, a 4-inch-wide sponge brayer, a disposable foam plate, cardstock (both scraps and full-size sheets), scissors, masking tape and a few other general art tools that all of us keep near our work-tables.

My first step:  With green masking tape, I secured the four corners of a sheet of cardstock to my work surface.  Plain cardstock is fine, but I chose a piece with random Gelli plate prints --

Over this cardstock, I used masking tape to add a rectangular scrap of paper, a sturdy paper similar to cardstock --

To keep this project quick and easy for myself, I used this white paper that's rectangular in shape.  However, more complicated shapes could work, too.  The main difference would be that the more complicated the mask, the more careful registration would need to be.  In this write-up, I'm using a rectangular shape because it eliminates the need for careful registration!

The next step was to add a stencil over the white paper, which would be working as a mask --

I chose Sassy Spray  for this step, and secured it on both sides with masking tape.

Now I prepared the heavy-body acrylic paint --

I used a disposable foam plate for loading the brayer with paint, but any similar surface would work -- a dollar-store disposable cutting board; a sheet of taped-down freezer paper, shiny side up; etc.

After loading the sponge brayer evenly with a coat of this thick paint, I rolled it across the stencil-and-papers "sandwich" --

Now, it was time to lift the stencil --

My next step was to remove the mask (the white rectangular strip of paper) --

The photo above shows the mask being pulled off (right side.)

The photo below shows that, next, I added another stencil, lining its edges up with the imprint-edges left by the previous stencil --

Pavilion Shadows  is the stencil that I added, as shown above.

At this point, I could have switched to paint of a different color -- there are many potential variables to this technique.  

I chose to keep the same paint color, adding it with the brayer -- applying it in only the narrow area that once had been covered by the mask --

I worked this step by eyeballing it -- but I could have taken the extra precaution of masking off the top third and the bottom third of the print.  I didn't take that precaution because I could easily tell where the center strip (maks) had been placed.  It would have been harder to do this if I had chosen a complicated shape for my mask.  But the rectangular shape made this an easy step.

After lifting off the second stencil, I was left with my final print -- as shown above, it's a composite of the two stencils that I'd used.  

This technique has endless variations.

Here are more finished samples:

Above:  the two stencils used here: Pavilion Shadows; SassySpray .

Above:  the two stencils used here: Pavilion Shadows; Sassy Spray .

Above: the two stencils used here were Sassy Spray and Ski-Lift Works . 

Above: the two stencils used here were Sassy Spray  and Ski-Lift Works. 

Have fun combining your stencils to make new, unique images!

Many -- but not all -- of my stencils are shown on this blog's right sidebar, as the reader scrolls down. 

To see all of my stencils, just go here.

More special ways of combining stencils will be posted here.  To follow this blog, just sign up for emails on the upper right.  

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