Guest Artist Piece - A Vintage Journey

Hello everyone!  I was so excited to be asked as a Guest Creative Guide by A Vintage Journey to be their Guest Artist for the month of August!  What an honor!  Amanda picked their theme for this month which is "Stencil It".  There are so many wonderful stencils on the market - this is a great theme!

It rarely happens, but I actually had an idea almost immediately.

I have always loved this quote by B  Line Designs and knew that I wanted to create a piece around it. I find it so inspiring!

I pulled out an old Cloud stencil by All Night Media and stenciled the clouds using DecoArt Fluid acrylics in Primary Cyan and Titan Buff mixed together and applied the color with a baby wipe to give it a softer look.  I began stenciling the clouds in, at first heavier towards the top of the piece and faded the color as I moved downwards.  Once the color was dry, I added a bit of Quinacridone Gold lightly over the top.

A small stiff brush was used to stipple in some white gesso to accent the clouds and make them look more puffy. (Forgot to take the photo before I laid out the birds)

The words were stenciled in randomly over the top of the sky using the Crafter's Workshop "Mini Art Is" stencil and Vintage Photo Distress Ink applied with a blending tool.

The final stencil used is Tim Holtz's Wildflower.  I think this is one of my favorites!  I once again used Vintage Photo Distress ink to stencil the wildflowers along the lower right side and bottom of the piece.

I stamped "A Bird is Never Afraid" by B Line Designs onto white tissue paper with Ranger Archival
ink and cut out the sentiment, cutting in into two parts.  Using matte medium, I adhered the sentiment to the middle of the piece, leaving enough room to add a die cut branch and a few flowers.  I laid the branch out and a flower so that I could see if there was enough room.

Using dark brown card stock, I die cut the birds from Tim's Sizzix Sizzlets Birds in Flight die and a branch from Memory Box's Woodland Branch die.  They were all adhered to the piece using matte medium.  I added some small die cut flowers cut from scrap paper and Tim Holtz's                  
Tattered Flower Garland die.  Finally,  it was fun to die cut some of Tim's Holtz's Stampers Anonymous Wildflowers from dark brown card stock and add them over the top of the stenciled wildflowers.  How cool is that they they coordinate so well!

I was going to altered a frame so that I could display this piece on my desk, however, I went to my local craft store and found this perfect Shabby Chic frame that I just love!  I didn't want to distract from the piece either, so I decided to leave the frame "as-is'.

I hope you have enjoyed seeing all the fabulous stencil projects by the wonderful ladies at "A Vintage Journey"  If you haven't done so yet, hop on over to their blog here to see them all!

Susan