Hip to be Square -by Genea

Hello beautiful souls,

Did you know how hip it is to be square? Well let me let you in on a little *secret* it is when we're talking about the  new Blocks Series stencils that have just been released by Artistcellar. There is something magical about the geometric shape of a square. 

So let's take a look at these babies in action! Remember when I made my first 4x6" mini  masterpieces? ("Genea goes on a creative streak") I used the "Deco"  stencil and did a nice psychedelic echo design.

I even talked my friend Zack into coming to play with me in the studio.  He worked on his very first watercolor and did an amazing job!

I'm excited to talk about celebrating making mistakes because they make you learn and how mistakes lead to things like "happy little accidents" as my highschool art teacher used to say  Let's take a look at my "Passion and Vision" piece I created as a gift for a friend.

See the mistake? Oh you don't? Well this is what we call a "happy little accident". What happened is that my black paint pen smeared when I was outlining the LK Os stencil. I was so bummed! I tried wiping off the few more blurby spots with a wet wipe, but you could still see the mistake. I remembered that I had used some black hearts in my "Minds Eye" piece to create some layers and decided that was EXACTLY how to work with my mistake.

The design didn't seem finished so I added my signature swirl eye to the hearts in gold to finish off the design. I love all of the layers the piece creates starting with the layer of the Cross T stencil all the way to to the finished piece.

For my next designs I am combining the fun of being a kid and the new Block Series stencils. How does that all work out, you may be asking yourself? Pretty freakin' sweet if you ask me! Let's take a look!

So first I started with a cute little 2 1/4"x2 1/4" square shrinky dink.

Next I did some layering with some inks and paint markers

I just love seeing a piece come together.  Now for the BEST part....

OMG! Isn't it SO cute?! I mean who doesn't like cute things?! Well you know how that goes when you make something super cool, right? Yep, MORE cool things! So off I went to do a cute little series of 4 with the awesome new Block Series.

Here they are in their full size. I tried a few different things because I have been noticing that the white paint pen is a bit more delicate. So this round I thought I would try putting the white accented dinks upside down and even dropping my gas oven temp to 275 degrees. Well.... that didn't exactly work. I had to bake the shrinky dinks WAY longer than their 3 minute suggested time. 

As you can see I did burn my poor little babies. It looks like the white paint is just a bit delicate to work for these pieces, but the others held up really well.  Luckily I did few different styles to see what worked well including one of the designs using a colored ink instead of gold like I did with most of the blocks. I also used a silver metallic ink to do outlining. Just look at how pretty this one turned out with the colored ink and silver metallic paint pen.

*Swoon* So I bet you can guess what I am working on the second I get back into my studio! What are you favorite pieces to create with these fantastic geometric stencils?

Love, light, and creativity,

Genea

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