For the Love of Trees: GINKGO and MIMOSA

Some time ago, MaryBeth Shaw did a video demonstrating a variety of ways to use stencils, most of which used paint; at least one, however, was a dry technique.  As always, her video shot up a flock of new ideas.

Below I'm showing two separate pieces, each with a tree-related theme.  Each of them was created on sturdy, glossy paper "liberated" from old publications...

Please click on the above image to better see the paper in the lower left.

In the lower left corner is part of a magazine page originally printed with bare trees.  

Using MaryBeth's dry-sanding technique,  I created a "sandwich" that had my 6"X6" stencil Ginkgo as the bottom layer (held in place with masking tape.)  

Over that, I placed the magazine page, securing it, too, with masking tape.  

The top "sandwich" layer was a sanding block (available at hardware and home supply stores.)  A plain sheet of sanding paper could work, but I prefer the block because it saves the fingers!  

One quick sanding session (using firm strokes) resulted in the over-print of ginkgo leaves that you see above, a faint imprint over the orange and black magazine page.

Behind the magazine page is a larger, whitish background paper that

had started life as a calendar page, a photo that originally contained a lot of dark green.  

Under it, I placed a stencil as the bottom layer -- this time, my 12"X12" Mimosa stencil -- again, I secured both the stencil and the paper to my work surface with masking tape.  

As a last step, I used a credit card to scrape zinc white (also called "blending white") acrylic paint across the paper, moving with the same firm strokes as needed for the sanding technique.  It's important with the scraping technique to go over each area of the paper one time only.  That second swipe is tempting, at least for me, but it never improves the looks of the piece.

The small sanded piece will be a greeting card cover, but it could just as easily become part of a large collage or part of an art journal page.  The larger, whitish paper will be cut into smaller pieces to become gift tags, greeting card backgrounds, and collage components.

The two stencils themselves look like this:

Mimosa Stencil, 9"x12"

Ginkgo Stencil, 6"x6"

Many thanks for visiting ... and if anything above rings a bell with anyone, it means you've been reading this blog for a long time.  :-)   This post is a "summer re-run."