Today I'm sharing a very special art journal spread celebrating summer!

I feel so incredibly grateful to have been a part of this retreat, and it was a most amazing way to begin my summer!

Friends and I stayed in The Loft above Ephemera Paducah. It was like a dream! Check out this map decor!

We spent hours doing shibori, thanks to Debi Adams teaching us! It was the first time Mary Beth Shaw, Karyl Howard, and I tried this!

I love that gorgeous, indigo color even in the vat! And to do this on the back patio of Ephemera Paducah was a delight!

Debi Adams and Kristin Williams inspired me to experiment with gel medium and my Map stencil on cotton paper and dye it in the vat, too.

I created a t-shirt, too! Debi Adams is a great teacher!

We spent time at the annual 400 mile yard sale looking for materials to incorporate into our mixed media art.

Kristin Williams scoped out the sale the day before and led the way for us! By the end of our morning, we had filled her truck! I found some great vintage maps, and incorporated a bit of these maps into this art journal spread to document those days.

Was really wonderful to recall memories of that long weekend as I painted these pages!

We began our mornings with long walks and talking, admiring the Paducah scenery and river, rewarding ourselves with amazing coffee. Then back to The Loft for delicious pastries from the local bakery, enjoying our coffee, art journaling, and visiting. I am so grateful for my friends and this time we spent together and the memories I will always have.

Want to join in the fun? Watch Tina Walker's blog and follow her on Facebook and Instagram for new prompts each Monday! Be sure and tag #thestencilfiedjournal and #stencilgirl with each post so we can see your wonderful creations!

​This week, I'm linking up with Simon Says: Frame It challenge and A Vintage Journey's June Stencil It challenge.
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Thanks so much for visiting my blog!
​Have a wonderful and creative week!

For this week's prompt, I created the spread below with StazOn Midi Ink Pad in Spiced Chai and my Going Global Small stencil from StencilGirl® Products on Unbleached Titanium acrylic. I inked the edge of the pages with Spiced Chai, too. I intentionally made my spread look a bit vintage/weathered to begin with, and left the background a light value and very minimal so that Mother Nature can do her thing with some weathering of her own!

Looking forward to seeing how Mother Nature transforms this with summer sun and thunderstorms for a prompt later in this challenge! Hoping to get some nice rust prints on it in the weeks ahead.

Want to join in the fun? Watch Tina Walker's blog and follow her on Facebook and Instagram for new prompts each Monday! Be sure and tag #thestencilfiedjournal and #stencilgirl with each post so we can see your wonderful creations!

​This week, I'm linking up with Simon Says: Anything But A Card challenge and A Vintage Journey's June Stencil It challenge.
​
Thanks so much for visiting my blog!
​I hope you have a great week!

Today I am sharing what I created for Week 1 of The Stencilfied Journal!
This amazing collaboration was organized by Tina Walker, Collaborations Columnist for StencilGirl® Talk!
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Each week, for the next 16 weeks, I will be sharing art journaling created in my field journal inspired by Tina's creative prompts! 

For this first week, I packed a lot of StencilGirl® stencils in this little journal spread!
The more circles, the better!

StencilGirl® stencils used:
Mary Beth Shaw's Private Collection 15.5 mini stencil
Let's Go 2
Hemispheres
​Map Symbols Mini

This is going to be a super fun and inspiring 16 weeks of stenciling!
And I just love that it is happening during summer!

Want to join in the fun? Watch Tina Walker's blog and follow her on Facebook and Instagram for new prompts each Monday! Be sure and tag #thestencilfiedjournal and #stencilgirl with each post so we can see your wonderful creations!

This week, I'm linking up with A Vintage Journey's June Stencil It challenge.

Thanks so much for visiting my blog!
​Hope you're having a wonderful week!

Today I'm sharing my newest art journal pages! This spread incorporates my Map stencil and Let’s Go 1 stencil along with Mary Beth Shaw's Greek Key stencil from StencilGirl® Products. I've also layered acrylic paints, pastels, inks, collage, and handwritten lyrics from Van Morrison's song Listen to the Lion using techniques from Roxanne Coble's Lyrical online art journal class! This spread is 12" x 18" in my large Dylusions journal:

Below are detailed photos of my pages:

This week, I'm linking up with Simon Says: Inspired By A Song challenge.
Thanks so much for visiting my blog!
​I hope you have a great week!

I feel so incredibly lucky and grateful to have joined Roxanne Evans Stout for a day of creating
​mixed media collages with her nature-based stencil designs on Sunday!

It was an absolute delight to meet Roxanne, to see her exquisite artwork in person, to talk with her
and learn from her. She is an inspiration and her joy is contagious!

Of course, it was a super treat to sit next to Mary Beth Shaw during the workshop, too!

With just 12 other workshop participants, we spent the day celebrating spring in St. Louis,
gathering together to make mixed media collages.

​Seeing Roxanne's pieces in person was one of the highlights for me.
They are like precious treasures, conveying feelings of connecting, timelessness and re-creation:

I loved making layered backgrounds and textures with a variety of media and mark-making:

Roxanne demonstrated collage techniques for us to explore
and had gifted each workshop participant with a lovely array of ephemera to incorporate.
I combined this ephemera from Roxanne with some of my own:

I experienced pure joy combining these beautiful papers and fabrics,
​and wished the workshop had gone on for days and days!

Roxanne also shared different stenciling techniques with her StencilGirl® Products: stencil designs that include images of the birds and fish and animals that she loves to watch and include in her own artwork.
This is Roxanne's art and one of her Journey stencil:

It was wonderful seeing all of our creations together at the end of the workshop! Such breadth and beauty!

If you ever have a chance to take a workshop with Roxanne Evans Stout, it's a must!
​You definitely will leave feeling renewed with a full heart.

To celebrate Earth Day today, Team StencilGirl® members are getting creative with
Resketch products and StencilGirl® stencils!
Resketch creates unique journals and sketchbooks made of high-quality reclaimed paper.

Why use reclaimed paper?
Resketch explains: "We think it's tragic when paper that's otherwise perfectly fine to use
is tossed in the garbage, or even the recycling bin.
Let's take that paper and create something awesome with it."

I found all kinds of fun papers inside my 7" x 9" Resketch book!
I combined the colorful papers with my Let's Go 2 stencil and It's a Small World Longitude stencil
​to create my Earth Day art journal page:

My Resketch book contained all sorts of colors AND MAPS! Woot! Woot!
And I had a lot of fun cutting, tearing, layering and collaging these!

And I used Deep Sea embossing powder from Seth Apter and Emerald Creek
​with my It's a Small World Longitude stencil...

The only paper not from my Resketch book is the western hemisphere image
​on the top right portion of the composition.

It was fun to challenge myself to create this Earth Day page
​relying on papers from my Resketch book and no paint!

I started with an 8" x 10" 7gypsies Architextures Artboard. Artboards are heavy duty pressed boards covered in a dense, slightly textured white paper, and I knew this would be the perfect substrate for the collage and watercolor techniques I wanted to use. I began by gluing various papers to the board using a UHU glue stick. Included in this collage are map wrapping paper, a bit of a black and white map, a piece of 1920s ledger paper from a Sea Caption documenting his ship's travels, and a postcard and vintage stamp. On the postcard I stenciled the words "let's go" using StazOn ink in Spiced Chai, a small sponge dauber and my Let's Go 2 stencil from StencilGirl® Products:

Next, I added modeling paste with a palette knife through my Map stencil
around the edges of this piece and let dry.

Then I used a small round brush to add Lindy’s TiffanyLou Blue Shimmer Spray, Time Travel Teal Shimmer Spray, and Tainted Love Teal Shimmer Spray over the modeling paste (starting with lightest color) on all 4 sides of the artwork. It was fun using these sprays like watercolors, dipping my round brush directly into the bottles then applying to my work!

I was sure to add some drips and drops and splatters to my work, too!

And using Seth Apter's Starstruck die and chipboard, I cut out two identical star shapes. I embossed one of these chipboard embellishments with Lindy's Desert Moon Turquoise embossing powder and the other with Hyancinth Blue Jade embossing powder. I stacked these on top of one another, added a Tim Holtz Compass Coin and Game Spinner, and added this new embellishment to the work as a focal point and to give the piece even more depth and dimension. I was so pleased that the embossing powders coordinate with the background colors so beautifully.

Lastly, I inked the edges of this piece with my StazOn Spiced Chai ink pad, running it up and down the edges a few times and over the front of the corners, too.

I'm linking up to the Creative Artiste's #37th Challenge and More Mixed Media Challenge "Anything Goes" optional Yellow, too!
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