What's in my art journal? Old problem, New Stencil

Stencil & Mask

I've got a nice little stack of handcut stencils that's continuing to grow.  Ever since I bought the Cricut Explore Air, I've been trying to cut these puppies on it, its definitely been an art tantrum kinda thing.

 Let me back track and say I've fallen in and out of love with this Cricut Explore and I miss my Cricut Expression (WE had and understanding!).  I've had tons of technical issues with this Explore and cutting stencils were a hit and miss thing, mostly miss.  Now with the new design space, I'm in love again.  However, I'm still having a problem with scanning my images for cutting.  No matter how much I clean my scanning surface, there's always these invisible specks that get pick up on the image that the software wants to cut out.  It's so frustrating.  Please if you have any suggestions I'd love to hear it.

Any who, I was able to cut several stencils last night, specks and all, and this one is going to be a lot of fun.  All that to say this, here's what I've done with it so far.  Warning, you'll probably see this stencil a lot!

This is using the mask

This is using the stencil

And this is Tiger (AKA Kitty), my grandcat,  he spell checked this blog for me....thank you Tiger.

And thank YOU for stopping by, every visit is appreciated.  Until the next blog...enjoy!

What's in my art journal? New Pages

I can't get enough of my Funky Girl stamps and this page came about from a conversation a friend and I had recently.

The background is a light duplicate print of the page next to it (not shown) topped with a stenciling mishap.  The Funky Girl, Nikki, was stamped on 90lb watercolor paper, colored, cut out and clued on top of a brick stencil.

On this page I was trying out one of Jane Davenports face stamp.  I really like it.  Definitely a stamp you can tweak to accommodate your own style.  

The background had some blobs of ink and scribbles on it that I covered up with stencils, stamps and ink.

I appreciate you taking the time to stop by.  I'm working on a tutorial video about making beautiful backgrounds and printing on top of it.  So be on the look out for that in the next day or so.

Until the next blog...enjoy!

What's in my art journal? - I See Faces

Happy Sunday everyone.

My art journal share today is the result of left of ink from a stencil I made last week.  As I was working on last week journal page and experimenting, I was using the page next to it to wipe off the excess ink from the stencil.  Sometimes that's as far as I go with cleaning my stencils.  It's second nature for me to use another journal page to do this so I really wasn't paying attention.  It wasn't until I was finished that I noticed how the faces overlapped.  How many faces do you see?

I think it's wonderful when a page emerges unexpectedly and seemingly without any effort.  I purposely added the stencil in the top left and bottom right corners and some marker lines to help see the faces then called it done.

 That's it for me today, thank you so much for stopping by.  I'd love for you to hit the subscribe button to keep up with what I'm doing.

Until the next blog...enjoy!

Carol