Stencils and oxides

This is the first time I’ve used this beautiful stencil. I ordered it from a Canadian artist, Designs by Ryn. I love how delicate the maidenhair fern design is.

It was also the first time I have used pixie spray which is designed to keep stencils from moving on your paper while you apply ink or another medium. I followed the instructions on the spray bottle and then blended through the stencil onto hot pressed watercolour paper with oxide inks. It worked brilliantly. I used Ranger blending tools for this card but switched to blending brushes for the next card.

For both cards I used salty ocean, bundled sage and faded jeans distress oxide inks. When blending on the panel above I moved the stencil several times and the adhesive from the pixie spray continued to hold it. I didn’t clean the brush between colours which gave me a range of teal tones as I moved from bundled sage to the blue inks. This one might look a bit messy but I love all the layering of pattern and colour.

I blended faded jeans oxide ink on a piece of watercolour paper so I could cut letters from an exact match of blue then popped up the ones above on a layer of white letters. The letters are die cut with C&9 ‘simple serif alphabet dies’ and the words are from the C&9 set ‘meadow blossoms’. The little circles are watermarks made by adding a drop of water, leaving it for a minute then dabbing it up with a paper towel.

I also tried a journal page using similar techniques but took it a step too far! I will try again though, because the potential was there for a pretty spread. I made one more panel while I had the oxides and stencil out but I have another plan in mind for that one.

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