Hello from my Creative Squad! Today we have Emilie Murphy with us using my Lady Liberty stamp and my Central Ave 4×4 stencil and sharing her fresh and funky take on our theme: Wild and Free – After so many months of careful living, it’s time to go Wild and Free… In our Art! Go a little crazy in there and live it up with bright colors, exuberant mark making, bold colors – however you want to go a bit bananas. It’s time to let loose!
Hi there! Hope you are doing well and enjoying the summer so far.
My first thought of “Wild and Free” theme was to use Nathalie’s stamp “Lady Liberty“, well known symbol of Liberty and emblem of New York City. Lately, I got nostalgic about my trip there, already ten years ago. I had spent such a great week in this fantastic and energetic city.
I started my page making some marks with permanent black pens on watercolor paper. I used a Posca pen to make blobs of black paint that I spread with a plastic card and straw. I let it dry completely.
Then I applied some watercolor and limited my colors to two ones with kind of neutral tone. I slightly sprinkled a little bit of salt in some wet area because I love the effect when it dries.
I decided to work on my background with the “Central Ave” 4×4 stencil. I first laid down my stencil and applied distress oxide ink directly through the stencil with a foam tool. Then, as I wanted to keep some blank less busy areas, I applied distress oxide ink on my stencil and spritzed a mist of water then laid down my stencil on the paper. I let the stencil down few seconds before removing it. As a result the paper absorbs the ink and you get a light negative print of your stencil. That is a cool effect giving a kind of ghost print.
In order to unify all together the different areas of my background, I added more watercolor in order to make pop the stencil pattern out and get some circles.
I introduced smaller circle shapes made only with the central part of the stencil. I think it brings an interesting dynamic to the background having different sizes of circles. It’s amazing what we can do with this simple stencil. I also added some black splatters with a water-soluble crayon. I can’t help myself… I love splatters!
Then I prepared my focal image. I stamped the “Lady Liberty” stamp with VersaFine Clair ink. It is just a matter of preference. I could have used also archival ink. I gathered few other elements with coordinated colors that I wanted to add like a handmade label, a couple of Washi tapes, black thread and buttons. The “wild and free” sentiment has been made with a hand-label tool.
Finally, I assembled all the elements the way I wanted to finish my page.
Hope you have enjoyed this easy and pretty quick tutorial. I made the choice of doing a journal page but this could have been also great as a card.
Have a good rest of the week and see you next month!
Thank you Emilie – love how you tied everything together with the splatters, colors, and mark making!
Give it a try: you can find all my Rubber Stamps and Stencils in my Online Shop and here are some of the other supplies Emilie used:
Play along with our monthly themes and weekly projects! Working on something yourself that you’d like to share? Email me how you used my stencils and stamps with the theme and email me an image – I would love to share your projects in my next “n*Spiration From Around the Globe“.
