Fly Away with Me, StencilGirl & Craft Hoarders Anonymous Challenge #10!

Come join me as I use my stash & a challenge to create a new piece of art!

You don't have to ask me twice to get messy when it comes to art, so when I read Challenge #10 from Craft Hoarders Anonymous Challenge Blog ~ I was scrambling to pull out supplies and make a lovely artsy mess! 

Challenge #10 Spray It! Ink It! Paint It! Smear It! Emboss It!

Show us your inner mixed media diva! Use spray mists, inks, paints, modeling paste, embossing powder, pastels, chalk, and whatever messy media you can find! Let's dig into that hoard, pull out some of that "messy stuff," and use it up! There is a mess-maker hiding in all of you! Let her/him out to play!

I started with a canvas I have in my pile of canvases with backgrounds but nothing else on them.  I call it my Lonely Tribe of Backgrounds - there are quite a few!  This one in particular I had created this amazing background with Golden Fluid Acrylic paints and glazing medium.  I allowed it dry for 24 hours and got this scrumptious background.

Here is a close up.

I began by layering different stencils with some paint to try and "unstick" my mind.  I had no plan at this point.  I love using lots of different stencils for texture and helping me free my creativity.  Read at the end of my post for the StencilGirl stencils I used.  I know, I know "Holy Stencil Hoarding!" :)

I started with the Queen Anne Lace stencil, only using the top part.  This made my background remind me of the sea and the "lace" looked like coral to me.

I used some of the stencils with Heidi Swapp Color Shine sprays in various colors. I love these iridescent sprays because they are waterproof and oh so shimmery!

Look at that shimmer! Yum...

I started seeing an underwater picture and sketched out some fish.  But then I got majorly stuck.  I didn't want to cover anything but it was too chaotic to leave it like it was...so I went a completely different route.

 I scrapped the underwater scene because there was so much of the background I loved that I would lose by having to 'paint out' with water.  I decided to sketch out a butterfly with my stabilo pencil in black.  These pencils are great because they erase with a little spritz of water and wipe with a paper towel.

I used wood icing for texture with Carolyn Dube's Uplifting Words stencil and Nathalie Kalbach's What's the Point? stencil.

I began painting around the butterfly with titanium white to bring it out and separate it from the background.  I allowed lots of drippage because I think drips are gorgeous!

I continued with layers of color using splashes of Dr. Ph. Martin's Bombay India inks   and Daler Rowney India inks~ my favorite is the light green (it should be called lime green)! I also used lemon yellow, flame orange, teal and flame red.

 To add detailing to the butterfly, I began doodling on top of it with my white Fine Point Sharpie.  I continued to add other India inks for more color and depth around the wood icing.

Here are some close-ups of the butterfly.

 

And here is a photo of the final 24x24 canvas.

My butterfly is escaping a chaotic world and pursuing everything she believes in!

Hope you enjoying "flying" along with me today!

For more art tutorials, click my page above or you can make sure you don't miss a post and follow me on Bloglovin and Kirsten Reed Designs on Facebook.

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Stencils Used:

Just click on each one and it will take you directly to the page to purchase.

  

  

Supplies Other than Stencils Used In This Piece:

                  

Poem, Paint & Paper Towels

Yes, this is all about poems, paint and paper towels!  How in the world?  Well, I keep a paper towel close by me when I am working on a painting. I like to swab the brush on it before I rinse it in water.  This way the water doesn't get dirty as quickly and the brush gets cleaner.  

Because I often leave my mess (when in progress) over night, I came to my studio the next morning to find a beautiful paper towel all colored with my marks.  I couldn't throw it away and immediately set it on a 6x6 canvas with gel medium and molding paste through Lizzy Mayne's Bali Doily stencil at StencilGirl Products.

Now it sat there in My Lonely Tribe of Backgrounds for weeks.  But recently I pulled it out and painted some doodles on it.  I only had time to create something small ~ so it was perfect.

Around the same time, I was journaling with words from books and decided to take some words as my focal point for my beautifully abstract painting and I wrote a little poem

the glitter

exhaled an atmosphere of

soul

from my lips

I sprinkled in some glitter ...

and set the painting with resin. See my previous post here on trying resin on your art.  This is the kind I used.

Here she is! Can you see the shine from the resin coating in the upper left corner?

Have a glitter-filled day!

Food for Thought Friday

LOL!! Be safe in the sun this summer!

To Resin or Not to Resin?

Recently I have found myself using a hi-shine acrylic spray on several pieces of my art work.  Most of my artwork is happy and colorful and I love the brilliance the acrylic spray gave the colors.

I have seen resin used on art, but I have been a little hesitant to dive in myself.

Until this week...

I bought some self-leveling resin and mixed it up and poured it on a couple "itty bitty" (4x4" and smaller) pieces of art I used as my guinea pigs.

You can use torches, industrial heat guns to dry and get the bubbles out.  Since mine were small and I was "testing" the waters, I just used a stick to move the resin around and eliminate bubbles.

Here are my thoughts on resin after this experiment.

7 Take Aways on Resin

(1) Easy to Mix.  I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to use.  I literally poured a 1:1 ratio, mixed it up and poured.  I actually mixed up too much and had quite a bit leftover.

(2) Dries quicker than I thought. ~ easy to waste.  I finished up another "itty bitty" and decided to pour resin on it about an hour after I poured the others. I went to pick up my container of unused resin with NO LUCK.  The resin was hard as a rock inside the cup.

(3) Must pour exact amount ~ excess resin can cause messes. The instructions say to let the resin cure for 48 hours, but as I went to bed, it was dry enough to pick up and was not tacky.  I had poured with wax paper underneath my art.  The resin had created a clear pool around each art piece I then had to cut off with an exacto knife.  In the process I cut the sides of two canvases. :( UGH

(4) Fumes = Yuck.  The smell was not so overpowering at first, it was like a slow burn.  By the time I had poured resin on my last piece, my lungs felt like they were burning.  I was working in a ventilated space and had doors and windows open.  I moved the pieces to another part of the basement so I didn't have to breathe it any more. But I didn't like that I felt that way after using it.  Can't be good, right?

(5) Great Protection.  When the resin dries it is hard. I mean, like teflon hard.  It really truly protects the painting underneath.

(6) Loss of texture.  I paint with lots of texture, often using molding paste in my work.  After coating the resin on these pieces, I definitely lost some texture. These flowers were completely popping off the canvas prior to the resin.  After the resin, you can see little peaks, but not the eye-popping texture before the resin.


 

(7) I {heart} the look of resin on my art.  It just really makes all my layers of goodness and texture look beautiful.  I really like the look of my art under resin.

Overall, I felt there were enough cons for me that it won't be something I use on a regular basis.  But being a visual person, I really do love the different look I get when I use it and I won't kick it out of my studio for good!

Hope this was helpful ~ what are your thoughts?