Tim Holtz, stencils & markers inspiration

As part of my current experimentation to discover what floats my creative boat I've been coming at projects in a new ways. Instead of having a visualisation of how I want something to look and then choosing supplies, I've been doing it the other way round, gathering a random collection of things such as stencils, colours and stamps and seeing what they suggest. That's how this arrived....

The background was made using one of Ken Oliver's colour bursts (the green one) which work in a very similar way to brushos colour pigments but are more vibrant, sometimes this is what I want, sometimes I prefer the more muted and subtle results of brushos. I stamped over it with a grey ink using a random stamp which just fitted into the space left by the background and used a Tim Holtz stencil and Hickory Smoke mini ink pad to make the diamond shapes. I didn't want to leave these blank so I added some doodling.

The stencil I used was this one...

I seem to be turning to this one a lot so I decided to go for softer, less industrial supplies for the next project. Starting with the colours, I turned to Tim Holtz distress markers, regular readers will know I love these. I made a little scribble with the brush end and went over it with a water brush to see which worked together best. Then selected some pretty stencils.

I used this gorgeous Hero Arts stencil and spritzed old paper through it for a background.

Then using milled lavender, picked out the flower heads from this stencil in random places over the background. Finally I added the bird on a branch stamp below. I stamped it twice, first in wheelbarrow greythen in black. I wanted a shadow effect, not sure if that worked or if I should put my glasses on.

I added some spottiness from the stamp in the same pack in brown round the edges and added two branches on the left of the page. The sentiment was written by hand, smodged a little round the edges with brown again and stuck in place. It's from a Beatles song and I have it on a silver necklace which was a gift from Himself.

I changed the words a bit. Sorry Beatles.

Last weekend I made myself a mandala wheel to colour in the evenings. I wanted to try out the water colour properties of the Tim Holtz markers.

I selected my favourites shades of blue and green and used words from a song I'd heard on the radio which was buzzing round my head. (Mama Cass, make your own kind of music. Turn it up LOUD and tell me it doesn't make you smile.)

Nice colours but a bit flat...so I added more doodles. I don't think this is finished yet, it needs more interesting detail added. It's a work in progress. But I absolutely love how softly the colours bleed. So that worked :)

Posted with Blogsy