Creative Squad

True Blue – Josefine Fouarge

  

Hello my friends! Today is Tuesday so that means one of my Creative Squad posts! Here we have Josefine Fouarge sharing with us an art journal page that is a wonderful combination of colors and stamped and stenciled elements. Josefine uses my new Flower Maze and Valley Road stencils, and my Brownstone and My Home is My Castle stamps in this lovely composition. This month’s theme is: True Blue – Blue is the color of honesty and serenity. It’s calming and has even been shown to promote healing. It reminds us of the water and the sky. Let’s slow things down this month and bask in the tranquility of the color blue.

I could use some calmness this month. Life is catching up and finding those quiet moments is becoming a challenge. So, I’m looking forward to those healing effects from using the color blue (it’s probably more the process of creating itself that will do that for me ;) ).

I started by adding different pieces of tape to my journal page to create some texture for the background. I was hoping for more blue from the watercolor powders, but it turned out that there were a lot of green and purple pigments in there as well.

But that just made it more interesting, so I added powders and water in different layers, till I had the look that I liked. What I didn’t like was the tape that I used for the background, so I removed those, at least the majority of it.

To decorate those now white areas, I grabbed the new Flower Maze stencil and blended a mix of Mermaid Lagoon Distress Ink and Blueprint Sketch Distress Oxide through them.

I made sure to blend the ink only in those white areas.

I already knew that I wanted to add the sentiment “My Home is my Castle” and I wanted it to pop a little against the background. A lighter blue blended through the Valley Road stencil helped me with that.

My home really is my castle and the place where I regenerate and calm down. In order to see the Brownstone stamp house in the background, I decided to stamp it onto a piece of tissue paper that had some clean up spots from a different project on it. Thankfully, they are mainly blue.

Just a few finishing touches everywhere and I was done with my grungy, blue art journal page.

I really like the look of the Flower Maze stencil in the white areas.

Here is the close up of the Brownstone. A few of the neighbors were home.

Thanks for stopping by and don’t forget to come back every Tuesday for more inspiration from the Creative Squad.

Thank you Josefine – I also love how that Flower Maze stencil pops! You can find all my stencils and stamps in my Online Shop. Here are some of the other supplies that Josefine used:



Feel inspired? Working on something yourself that you’d like to share?  I love to see how you interpret our monthly themes. 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“.

Nat

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Stenciled Umbrellas for a Rainy Day – DIY Play Date

Did you know you can stencil on an umbrella and turn it into a work of art? You can and it is a fun project. Kim and I got together on a sunny day to transform a couple umbrellas into something that will brighten any rainy day we encounter.

We chose white umbrellas as our “blank canvas” and some of Nat’s new stencil designs. We worked outside with acrylic spray paint (and proper protection – face mask) and each tried a different way to approach the project.

I began by painting my umbrella with heavy body paint to create a new background color.

I chose three different colors to alternate on the panels. This is a great way to make your umbrella any color you want.  BUT I learned the paint definitely stiffens the fabric and makes the umbrella hard to wrap up when you are all finished. I could almost not get the velcro tie around it in the end. Oops. It’s still doable, but tight.

Kim decided to spray paint directly on the fabric. She taped down the stencil and some paper as a mask. She began with my new Star Struck stencil and some blue paint.

The 9×12 stencils are a nice size to cover a large area with color and pattern.

She covered the top of 3 alternating panels with a couple colors of blue. The Star Struck stencil almost looks like umbrellas so it works nicely.

She then moved to the bottom to add more.

I chose my new Hamilton stencil – absolutely loving this pattern!!! I used a buff color on the blue panels.

I lined up the pattern and covered the whole panel with the design.

On some panels I used Hamilton and on others I used my new Van Vorst stencil – both are beautiful and delicate designs.

Here is my umbrella with the patterns. I might add more to the yellow panels – I chose a very subtle color for that one and it’s hard to see it once it dried.

Kim added green with my new Flower Maze stencil and just blended one pattern into the other.

Peekaboo :)

Looks great and all ready to brighten up a dreary day!

So you have lots of options when you start with a white umbrella. You could choose colors and coordinate it with your rain coat or rain boots or you could just aim to make something that makes you smile on a rainy day :)

You can find my new stencils in my shop here, as well as all my other products. Here are some of the supplies that we used:


 

Nat

Comments (4)

  • LindaLubovich

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    If you add textile medium to the acrylic paint you’ll avoid the stiffness you experienced when you base-coated your umbrella. Hi from San Jose.

    Reply

    • nathalie-kalbach

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      Great tip Linda, thank you! In this case on of the main problems was that I used heavy body paint which just made a too thick of a coating so that the string to tie it together became to short. Kim didn’t have the same problems using just spray paint.

      Reply

  • Sue Clarke

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    Clever and colorful…did you put anything on to preserve the paint…so it doesn’t run in the rain?

    Reply

    • nathalie-kalbach

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      thank you Sue. Since Acrylic paint is water proof I did nothing else to it- it should be stay as is :)

      Reply

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