Mica and Stencils!

From US Artquest (maybe other vendors as well) you can get mica, a translucent mineral that comes in thin layers; and it can be split into even thinner layers. 

It arrives looking like this:

 
You can easily cut these tiles with scissors to form any shape you want.

In the samples directly below, however, I've used the shapes just as they came out of the package.




Above: printed with my  9"x 12" stencil Clustered Leaves and white acrylic paint; my last step was to strengthen the leaves' lines using a red permanent marker by Sakura.

Above:  my 9" x 12" Loopy Ladders was used on a piece of reflective mica

Above: I used 9"x 12" Clustered Leaves to print the background and and 9"x 12" Loopy Ladders to print the middle, barrel-shaped layer.

Above:  Clustered Leaves was used with metallic silver paint to make this print on mica.

Above:  Printed with one leaf from Clustered Leaves (notice the translucency of the mica that lets you see part of the background, which was created with both Clustered Leaves and Loopy Ladders.)





Above:  Again, an image printed using one leaf from Clustered Leaves.

Note:  For each of the 2 above prints that feature just a single leaf from Clustered Leaves, I masked off a single leaf as shown below.  Notice there is a sheet of mica under the masked-off leaf:

Because mica is translucent, it can become the "glass" window atop a photo, a drawing or any other image.  You can create a frame around the edges of this "glass" using a stencil with acrylic paint; mica's slick surface readily accepts acrylic paint.

On each of the three images below, I've used the same sheet of transparent mica, trimmed around the edges with metallic acrylic paint applied thru parts of my Loopy Ladders stencil.  

These three temporary placements are here to show how a piece of mica -- with its edges stencil-printed -- can be used as a frame-accent for areas you want to highlight in any artwork.  Altho these three are temporary, please note that it's easy to permanently attach mica to any sturdy surface; just use a small dab of heavy gloss gel medium.

The heron framed here was printed with my 6" x 6" Heron stencil.

Today's two line-dominant stencils look like this:

Loopy Ladders (9"x 12")

Clustered Leaves (9"x 12")

Because it's flat, mica can be used for layered art that will fit smoothly onto the pages of an art journal.  But -- because it's rigid -- you may want to use it instead on a journal cover.

Mica can also morph into 3D art, when you support it underneath using 3-dimensional glue dots.

And mica makes great dangle-art -- just use a grommet tool to punch a hole in the top of stencil-printed mica pieces to make dangle earrings, Christmas tree ornaments ... you name it.

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