Guest Post: Stenciled "Do Not Fear" Canvas
March 10, 2015
Hello! I’m Cheryl Waters and I’m thrilled to be here! Thank you Julie for having me as a guest. I just love Julie, her fun personality, her art, use of color, and all things wild, funky and fun! Today, I thought I’d share with you a fun technique that I happened upon by accident. There’s that saying, “Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” ~ Scott Adams
While I’m a big art journaler, I enjoy bringing those techniques from time to time to create a card or layout (scrapbook type). I am a big mixed media gal at heart and am always using my favorite stencils by Crafter’s Workshop, specifically Julie's. I love the larger ones and the Balzer Bits. I love the new stencil styles I saw at CHA and have found a few! So I’d like to walk you through creating this canvas titled ‘Do Not Fear’.
The How to:
- Cover Canvas with Gesso.
- Using a pencil, lightly sketch a figure (I drew an angel). If you don’t want to freehand the drawing try one of Julie’s cool girl stencils.
- Next take yellow paint and the "4 Feathers" stencil to create the basis of the angel wings.
- Next place a generous amount of grey paint onto palette paper or a paper plate.
- Dip a facial tissue or piece of toilet paper into the paint several times until it is saturated with paint.
- Take the "4 Feathers" Stencil and use the tissue or toilet paper to transfer grey paint through the feather stencil onto the canvas. Make sure you pick up the paint with the tissue and let pieces of the tissue transfer through to the canvas. Moisten the tissue if necessary with water. The paint and the tissue (softer the better) create like a stucco texture . . . even reminds me a little of paper mache.
- Next take more yellow paint and the "4 Feathers" stencil to create more of the wings. Also use gold and orange/yellow ink spray along with the Feather Stencil to fill in wings.
- Next take some gloss gel medium and the "Silhouette Script" stencil and apply the gel medium through the stencil to transfer portions of the design onto the angel's hair.
- Do the same with the gloss gel medium and the "Deco Doily" stencil but on her dress.
- Allow the gel medium to dry well.
- Next take Inktense Blocks and scribble some pinks, purple and blue onto the dress. Be generous. The Inktense blocks are vibrant and concentrated color.
- Next take a spray bottle of water and wet the areas you've used the Inktense blocks. The colors will run into the groves of the gel medium in the shape of the stencil. I love it!!!
- Do the same with a brown Inktense block onto the portions of the hair where you applied gel and the stencil. Next take a yellow watercolor crayon and fill in the hair. Take a wet paintbrush and move the watercolor around filling in the hair. Continue to fill in the angel with flesh color on face, eyes, etc. Add a slight amount of blue around the edge of the canvas.
- Put in detail with black pen.
- Stamp your message.
- Enjoy your mixed media masterpiece. Mine will be a gift to my daughter.
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Cheryl enjoys living in beautiful So. Cal (sunny Southern California) with her husband of over 20 years and her sixteen-year-old daughter who is a perfect subject for her artsy adventures. Her day job she works for the Sheriff’s Department and balances charity work, church and other activities as well. The last two years have been spent boxing with breast cancer but she enjoys sharing a message of HOPE.
Her artsy adventures include creating, writing and sharing with Stampington’s many publications on a fairly regular basis. She enjoys all kinds of forms of art from jewelry and canvas to art journaling and altering. She is a vintage and flea market frequent flyer who enjoys finding treasures to alter, paint and deck out in the name of art. She also enjoys sharing with different manufacturers different ways to use their product, product development and more. She enjoys teaching and encouraging others in their artsy adventures as well as connecting with artists and crafters all across the globe. You can find her sharing about life, art and hope as well as connecting with other like-minded folks on her blog at blog.artsyfindings.com. You can also find her sharing on
- Facebook (where a lot of the interaction takes place): https://www.facebook.com/cheryl.bodkinwaters
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/CherylWaters
- Instagram: Artsychick2
- Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/artsyfindings/
P.S. ~ Cheryl also won a Brother ScanNCut at CHA by posting a photo with her favorite artsy person in the Brother booth.