Summer Stencil Techniques With Suzanne: Bump It!

Raise your hand if you get excited for new releases of your favorite craft supplies.. hands raised here!  Suzanne here, and I'm bringing you a weekly series showing six ways to use tags with the brand-spanking new stencils designed by Julie! Today we'll be doing the bump, stencil bumping, that is.  I hope you'll enjoy this series of #RANZAmade techniques.  

I decided to use fluid acrylics along with some gesso.  Now, I know fluid acrylics may not be everyone's choice to use with stencils.  If you apply too much paint it will run a bit, and you won't get crisp lines.  That's where the gesso and makeup sponges come in to play.

Single out the part of the stencil you want to use by taping off any designs that are close.  The leaves I chose are in the corner, so as you can see I only taped off the two sides using artists' tape (washi tape might also work, as long as it stays adhered for the process).  If you're wondering about the edges of the stencil, that's a tip Julie uses on her 6×6' stencils to give it extra edging. 

Another quick tip, I added a bit of deli paper to the table since I knew I would be painting off the edges of the tags. This will protect your surface, and possibly give you a head start on some colored paper for using later.  I used the Chromium Green which is opaque for the base layer of leaves.  

The makeup sponge is my favorite tool when using stencils. I love the crisp edges I can get when I use them. It does take a little bit of practice, though. You want to use a palette (as shown in the product picture) and dab into the paint, and pounce off excess before stenciling. Pounce up and down through the stencils onto the tag.  See the paint on the tape? It is a pretty useful tip, especially when using a smaller stencil and the openings are close together.

Here's the finished product. For my tag, I went ahead and added leaves all around the tags edges to try out different colors.

Once the paint is dry, line up the stencil on your painted leaves once again. Get as close as possible, perfection is not necessary!

Now mess it up, ha! I like to align the design, shift right, and then shift down.  As you can see below, it almost extends the design, and gives a drop shadow effect. Getting excited yet??

To add interest, I pounced in the gesso as well as the green.  Notice I didn't really mix it ahead of time. It will mix on the sponge when being pounced, but I like the look of it being more varied in color. 

Again dab off excess paint, and pounce through your stencil to fill the design right over your original leaves.

Check out the amazing results!!! There are so many possibilities with this technique.  I really loved the light color over the darker green. It makes for a super cool shadow effect.

Here's the finished tag. The top left, is just the base layer for comparison. The bottom right, is the pair I worked through with you above. The bottom left is the Nickel Azo Gold over the green.  Notice how different it looks because it is so transparent. The top right is the Phtalo Blue over the green. It is darker, but also slightly transparent.  You can still see the green base layer, but not as much as the Nickel Azo Gold.

 Overall, pretty snazzy if I do say so myself.  And it's not limited to paint, you can bump the stencil, and pencil in or use a marker over the base layer.  What ideas do you have now?  Will you try it out with your stencils?  Let us know!
   

You can pre-order the Aloha stencil from Scrapbook.com, among others!