If you followed along with Stencil Mania Maniac (see previous posts), you probably noticed that I was stenciling on brown paper with white paint. I love getting art supplies in the mail and an added bonus is when they arrived and have been packed with recyclable papers, such as these:
Sometimes I get brown packing paper and sometimes I get off-white packing paper. Both are very usable. But sometimes the brown paper is a perforated paper that reminds me of hand wipes in bathroom dispensers. I don't find this paper as usable because of the perforations that are every foot or so.
This paper was scrunched up in long snakes and not perforated...YAY!
I flattened it out and it was exactly 12" wide and there were several long lengths of it. I ironed it to flatten. This particular paper was slightly on the thin side.
I determined what size I wanted my paper and started cutting with my rotary tools.
In the end, I had a very nice stack of papers to use.
I used the Joggles.com new line of stencils to add some design to the papers. I stenciled one side, let it dry and then stenciled the other side of each piece.
Have you guessed what I'm making yet? It's an art journal! With brown paper pages. Here is how I created the covers. I cut some chipboard to size and then added gesso to each side. Then I stenciled using many of the stencils and many different colors. In the next photo, the cover on the right is how it looked after applying many layers of stencil designs and colors. The cover on the left is how it looked after I applied some design and painted it further. The additional painting has obscured the stenciling in some areas more than others, creating subtle layers of interest.
 |
| front cover |
 |
| front cover detail |
 |
| back cover |
 |
| back cover detail |
 |
| inside pages |
 |
| spine |
 |
| laying open |
As I mentioned above, this particular brown paper is quite thin and while the white stenciled design didn't shadow through to the opposite side of the paper, other mediums have and will. So I will probably end up only painting/drawing/etc. on one side of each page spread. My plan is to use this book/journal as a pattern design book. I will draw and paint patterns and add color and see what ideas are sparked.