Playing with Stencils

  In the scrapbooking department of my local Joann's, they have some laser-cut papers that I thought would make great stencils.  So I purchased a few of them on sale and tried to figure out how to make them useful for wet media like thickened dyes.


I probably could have used paint, but in his personal stash of goodies Mr. S had this stuff that he uses to coat the handles of tools so that they have non-slip grips.

I tested some on notebook paper, and it worked!  The rubberized paper completely repelled water.
So I went out on the lawn (which I had mowed earlier that morning) and sprayed the rubber on the stencil.  Of course, now there's something more than the front porch with the plastic buckets and art table covered with plastic sheeting that whips in the wind to upset the neighbors.  I suppose they'll just have to continue to suffer for my art.

  

I used my new stencil to roll on some thickened dye and it made this piece slightly more interesting, but it's still not exciting.

Being too impatient to use more dyes, I got out my Setacolor fabric paints in purple and fuchsia and rolled some on over the stencil.

And voila!  Much more interesting!

Then I got out a piece from the deconstructed screen printing that was really dull.  I had these sticks that are the same as the stuff that is inside colored pencils, but there's no wood -- they're all color.

I made this pressure plate with cardboard from a cereal box and hot glue.  I was going for a thing like Nienke had here on the Fire blog.    I didn't want to copy her work, but I loved the circular feel of the linocut she used.  

Hmmm... not very interesting.








I got out my stampers -- some I had made and some were purchased -- and I stamped and stenciled on the fabric with more paint.

 I'm not crazy about this piece.  I think that the colors of paint I used fight with the background color and make it look disjointed.  And the circular thing just disappears into the background.

For this one, I used a swirl of purple and golden yellow paints and rolled it on through a stencil.  There's no circular thing happening, but I really like this.  I think the colors are much better together and I could see using this whole or cutting it up and stitching it together with other fabrics.