Beat the Winter Blues

It's the last day of January and this year that proved to be an almost unrelentingly grey month. As I'm writing this on my laptop in the studio I can see a mix of wet snow and rain tumbling from the sky. It's neither one thing or another and it adds to the tediousness of this kind of weather. Although I don't suffer from SAD (Seasonally Affected Disorder) as such, my moods do suffer when the world looks like someone has thrown a grey blanket over it. In order to improve this situation I only have one solution: Make Art! And what better way to beat the winter blues than to use one of my newly acquired stencils. So I made a start this morning and with the help of a heatgun got it done by this afternoon.

Thanks to my mother's generous Christmas gift I have become a member of the Stencilgirl Club where we receive a new set of stencils every month this year.What a great way to brighten up each and every month! I love stencils and use them a lot in conjunction with my gelli plate but for this one I started off proceedings by spraying through the largest stencil (we get 3) with Dylusions inks. Once that was dry I added the magazine picture of a peacock (the theme for all the stencils this month) as shown and added acrylic paint through the same stencil around it. I cut out a face silhouette and used that as a mask, adding it at both sides of the page and I then over painted the remaining area of the page with blue acrylic.

After that too had dried I used the smallest stencil we received and a piece of vintage paper that I had painted green and added the word Renew from the stencil with blue paint and glued it to the art journal page as shown with gel medium. I used that too to add the two eyes and the Beat the winter blues words (from a magazine). Some outlining and doodling and the page was done.

I have promised myself to make at the very least one art journal page (I'm using an A4 sized Moleskine Sketchbook) every month using the club stencils from that month. These ones were gorgeous and not only do you get the stencils but you also receive free demonstration videos from the Stencilgirl's Design Team members as well as from the Stencil Girl (Mary Beth Shaw) herself!

 

Posted with Blogsy