Upon Unseen Wings

It is so lovely to do another project for Stencilgirl Products as a Guest Designer. You can also find this tutorial on Stencilgirl Talk. This piece has been on the cards since I received the Blueprints of Archeological Treasures stencil. My first thought on seeing it was how well it would work with postage stamps in some of the spaces. And of course, postage stamps themselves have a whole history incased in them and thus are very archeaological material in their own right.

I'm not a traditional stamp collector but I love stamps and buy them by the bagful in a delicious little shop in Edinburgh. I also indulge by buying stamp albums on Ebay. I have many more postage stamps than I'll ever be able to use but I love looking through them and selecting just the right one for any given project. The butterfly ones I'm using here are among my favourites.

Here are the full instructions on how I made this page:

1. Using 9 x 12 hot press 140lb watercolour paper, collage it completely with vintage map pieces using matte medium

2. Scrape on a thin layer of white gesso using an old credit card or a dry brush.

3. Spread thin layers of craft acrylics in your preferred colours over the surface, using your fingers (or a brush, if you prefer) and the credit card.

4. Spray through circular map stencil (from Stencilgirl Club October 2014) with Liquitex spray inks (or any other permanent spray ink). I used pink and green. Remember if you join the Stencilgirl Club now you can still order these back issues!

5. Using L326 Blueprints of Archeological Treasures stencil, tape it securely to the page with masking tape on all 4 sides, and outline all the shapes with a black marker.

6. Fill in the spaces with black (I used a medium point black Sharpie paint pen).

7. With a glue stick glue on 3 butterfly postage stamps.
8. Glue on vintage text, antiquing the edges with Vintage Sepia Versafine ink pad. I like to make poems out of text cut from vintage books. This one reads:

we know not where we are

upon unseen wings

In a dream thou mayst live a lifetime

so soon perisheth its memory

forgotten in the morning

Thy time is not yet come.

9. Outline each shape with white markers and do the same around all the outside edges.

Here are some detailed pictures:

 

 

Posted with Blogsy