You got your Stencils in my Stamps!

I was reading a great blog post by my art partner in crime, Julie Fei-Fan Balzer this week and I just loved it. She wrote it to kick off a week of stenciling so you'll want to check out this post (click on the photo), and every post for the whole week. She even challenged her readers to share their cool stencil techniques in a quest blog.

Click on the photo to read and subscribe to Julie's blog!

Which got me thinking. What haven't I tried with stencils yet? (I love a challenge!) I immediately thought of carved stamps. I actually couldn't wait to try it out and see what I could come up with this morning. So here is what I came up with:

I used Julie's small cloud stencil (by The Crafter's Workshop), and carving supplies from Speedball.

Next I traced the reversed of the stencil with a permanent pen so that it's easy to see.

Thickening the inside of the line gives me a strong bold look to start with.

I like to go around my stamp first with the smallest v carving blade. This gives me a "safety" zone.

I started carving away the center of the stamp until I got the semi-woodcarver look I was going for. I kept checking it with my stamp pad until I was satisfied.

I used my watercolor paper from this post for the background and stenciled light clouds with white acrylic paint.

You can just barely see the clouds...but just you wait!

I gave the clouds a squirt of Dylusions spray ink by Ranger. (Maybe, too much!)

Next, I quickly wiped over the piece with a baby wipe and the clouds resist the ink!

And now it's time to stamp! I cut my stamp down to exactly the same shape of the stencil so that I could easily line it up. I also cut it a little smaller than the stencil shape so it would be easy to get it all registered.

This piece really reminded me of one of MY favorite things...sunshowers. So I used white Enamel accents by Ranger and a  pin to make glossy, 3-D raindrops and then layered white and orange PanPastels in the upper corner and used a pencil eraser to erase some definition in the rays.

And here is the finished happy sun shower!

Are you motivated by challenges like I am? Are you planning on making something this weekend? Dinner, baking, artwork, art journaling, art quilt, or something else? If you're stuck, think about what two items in your arsenal you haven't put together in a while and see what ideas come from the pair-up.

If you've had great learning successes or even failures from your pair-ups, let me know! I'd love to hear what a fellow challenge-lover has done!

Have a great weekend!