How and When to Print a Fine Line Stencil with Briana

Hello Everyone!

It’s hard to believe that September is here already! We just had orientation at my son’s school. A day later, he decided he wanted to make cards that say, “Thank you for being my teacher.” My heart smiled when I heard what he wanted to do, so we got started right away. (Thank you to all of the educators, teachers, and support staff out there. You matter, and your work is so important!)

As my son created his cards, I could not keep my hands off of the art supplies, so I ended up making a background paper for this blog post. I used construction paper, crayons, and liquid watercolor.

For this blog post, I decided that I wanted to see what would happen if I used a stencil on top of this busy background. The stencil I chose is by Artistcellar, and is from the Sacred Geometry 2 Series. It’s called Seed of Life.

This stencil has fine lines. I didn’t want to cover up all of the color in my background, so I decided to use some Marabu Art Spray. This spray ink is acrylic-based vs. water-based spray ink, like Dylusions spray ink.

I liked how the color showed up, and the ink beaded up around the crayon. I got a little carried away though and sprayed a bit too much ink.

Instead of using paper towels to blot up the extra ink, I used a piece of 8 x 8 inch watercolor paper.

I pulled up the watercolor paper to check on the results of both papers.

As a mixed media artist and avid visual journal keeper, I love having a lot of papers to work with. I also am working on a series of 8 x 8 inch paintings, and this Seed of Life print will be a great start for one of those paintings.

While I am happy with the 8 x 8 printed version of the stencil, I could not see it well enough on my busy background.

That gave me the idea to use the stencil again with spray ink on the 8 x 8 inch paper, and make a print of it onto my background.

I used a card scraper to really rub the back of the wet stencil.

Here’s what things are looking like after pulling off my busy background paper. I think this is my favorite image of this whole bunch. I love those pink dots that happened.

Here’s a closer look at the print.

Those fine lines of the stencil are showing up much better now, especially since I dug the stencil into the paper by burnishing it with a plastic card.

Here’s how both of the papers looked at the end of my session.

In Summary, if you are going to work with a fine line stencil on a busy background, you may want to spray it with ink on a different paper first, then make a print of it onto your background. Burnishing with a plastic card is a great way to help the ink absorb into the paper, so the stencil lines are nice and sharp.

Spray inks and stencils are really fun to play with in a variety of projects. If you do not want your spray ink to be reactivated with water, Marabu Art Sprays are acrylic-based, which means they stay in place.

I hope you enjoyed this photo tutorial of my experiments and creative process.

Don’t forget to grab your Artistcellar stencils at 30 percent off until September 9^th, 2019. Use coupon code BACKTOSCHOOL19. You’ll love the high quality of the material and the fantastic designs!

Sending Blessings,

Briana of OrangeSpiralArts.com

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