Stencil Hop: Peek-a-Boo

Today is stencil hop day!  Hooray!  I asked three wonderfully talented woman to participate today:

• Jenny Doh: Jenny is an artful creator, collaborator, curator, and crochet-er.  She was the long-time Editor-in-Chief of Somerset Studio and now runs the popular website CRESCENDOh.com.  She has curated numerous books including Art Saves and Journal It (to which I was a contributor).
• Joanne Sharpe: Joanne and I first met at a CREATE retreat where we were both teachers.  She is a wonderful lettering artist.  You have probably seen her beautiful stamps from Art Gone Wild.  She is teaching at all three CREATE retreats this year (California, Chicago, and New Jersey), so do yourself a favor and take a class from her!
• Ronda Palazzari: Ronda is warm, enthusiastic, energetic, and talented.  She recently attended Ranger U. and is a misting maniac.  Ronda is the author of the book Art of Layers and on the design teams for Maya Road, Purple Onion, and Sizzix.

So what stencil did these three ladies get to play with?  I sent them Peek-a-Boo:

You can probably guess why this stencil is called Peek-a-Boo, can't you?  Yep, it looks like eyes.  Although I will tell you that at the time I designed it I was actually thinking of Indian textiles, which use a lot of circles and sequins.  So the first project I created with this stencil is this one:

It's kind of a faux version of an Indian textile.  I love the way it turned out.  I used Lumiere paints to do the stenciling and Lumiere paints have mica powder in them, so it really glows!

I instagrammed some process photos, so you can see how it came together:

After stenciling the moons and adding some blue circles I used the free motion foot on my machine to stitch around each shape several times.

Once the machine sewing was done, I hand stitched some sequins and beads onto the piece.

I'm not sure I managed to capture it in the photography, but it's very shiny -- between the paint and the sequins.  Just looking at it makes me happy!

Of course, the Peek-a-Boo stencil works for scrapbook layouts too:

I masked the stencil so that only one row showed at at time.  This allowed me to do the rainbow coloring. 

And as for the circles inside of each of the moon shapes...well, I'm kind of proud of this bit of design cleverness!  This is the Punchinella stencil:

And the circles fit perfectly inside of the moon shapes from the Peek-a-Boo stencil!  Check it out:

It works for both 12x12 and 6x6:

Of course one thing always leads to another, and using the Peek-a-Boo stencil with the Punchinella stencil started some wheels turning in my head.  And thus, my favorite use of the Peek-a-Boo stencil has been to use it the same way I would the Punchinella:

Lots of folks use Punchinella to jazz up a soft background.  The 6x6 version of the Peek-a-Boo stencil does a great job of doing that, but with a really unique shape.

And did you notice that I also used the 6x6 version of the Chevron stencil on this layout?  I traced a small section with a pen to create an arrow-like effect.  Here's another instagram work-in-progress photo:

I created this quick art journal background using a similar techinque to the one from the page above:

Watch the video for the how-to:

If you would like to win the Peek-a-Boo stencil in 6x6 and 12x12, please leave an answer to the following question in the comments section of this blog.  

Where do you find artistic inspiration?

If you don't know how to leave a comment, please watch this video.

Now get hopping:

• Jenny Doh
• Joanne Sharpe
• Ronda Palazzari

Thanks for stopping by!