The Joy of Skipping and Stenciling

Remember when we used to skip?  Wow - that was a joyous, carefree feeling.  I'll come back to that!

I had a spread to complete in the very last journal of the 6 artist around-the-world-circle-journal project started by the lovely Tracy Woodsford.    We all started sending our journals to each other in September.  This was mine, using stencils by Pam Carriker for Stencil Club as well as Dots & Dashes and Hebrew Calligraphy with Hamsa.

I had created this spread in Beate Olivia's journal.  It began with a mix of orange and pink gelli prints and left over book pages, which I pulled together with a yellow glaze.  It sat and it sat in all of its beautiful texture all last week, as I prepped for Saturday's class at The Ink Pad.

But on Monday, a wonderful white chipboard envelope from Stencil Girl arrived, bringing me Mary Nasser's compass and latitude/longitude stencils!  Also on Monday, I saw this gorgeous post by Maria McGuire, in which she spread modeling paste through her serene goddess stencil.

And my muse grabbed me!  I mixed blue paint and modeling paste and "smeared" it through Mary's stencils.  Honestly, I don't know how Maria does it -- mine was not nearly as even and crisp as hers.  But that's ok!  My uneven application led me to do more to my image - giving it a painterly look that went well with my textured background.

I added "my girl" skipping through the world, skipping through life.  We are about to go to Austria to meet up with my older daughter Mariel, who is living in the Czech Republic as a Fulbright English Teaching Scholar this year.  We plan to visit Vienna and Salzburg, then drive to Slovenia (where I will meet up in person with internet art friend Natasha May), then drive up to the Czech Republic for Easter in Mariel's town of Znojmo, and then visit Bratislava in Slovakia before returning to Vienna and then home.  How's that for 10 days of skipping around!

I added some background stenciling with the Circles and Squares stencil, and embellished her dress with Flying Tulips.  I added some rubber stamping using Graphic Detail stamps by Michelle Ward, and some images from old maps on the top left and bottom right.  

Linking up to Art Journal Journey's Moments of Happiness theme,  Mix it Monthly's Maps Challenge (which includes one of Mary's paintings as inspiration!),  The Artistic Stamper (Embossing and Texture), Art Journal Every Day and Paint Party Friday.  

Thank you so much for stopping by!  Leave a comment and say hello.  It means the world to me to know that you were here.  xo