Guest Designer - Leanne

It is time to introduce our Guest Designer for this month's challenge.  Please say hello and give a warm welcome to Leanne James of A Brush With A Stamper, who was the winner of our Tags, Bags and Boxes challenge.

Hi there, my name is Leanne Harris, I’ve been crafting for well over 15 years now, have won or been runner up in many different online challenges and design for Fashionable Stamping Challenges. I live in Northamptonshire, England, I have been married for 22 years and am Mum to two teenage daughters. I love rubber stamping and stencil work and my absolute passion is working with paints and inks (well really, anything that’s very messy!!!!!!). I live in a very busy household so my craft room is my “place for peace” and my go to room when I just need some therapy from all the madness that is going on around me!!! I bet there are lots of you out there that can sympathize with that?!!!!

I have a blog, “abrushwithastamper.blogspot.co.uk”, on which I post twice weekly the artwork that I have been creating - this can be anything from mdf work to mixed media to my passion of papercraft and card making. I love to read the kind comments that are left for me and to know that I am inspiring others - that’s what it’s all about for me.

I am really grateful to Cec and the team at Stamps and Stencils for asking me to be their Guest Designer for this challenge, I hope that I have inspired you to try something a little new with your stencils perhaps and I wish you all the very best of luck with the challenge.

I have completed this piece of artwork for the new challenge of Swirls, Whirls and Flourishes. As you can see I've got all three going on here.

Here are some of the supplies I used.

I have used a Stencil Girl stencil and inked through it with Watering Van Archival Ink on tissue paper.

I have attached the tissue paper to the canvas (this is a 12"x12" canvas so it is of some considerable size) with Mod Podge and allowed it to dry. I then put some modelling paste through a couple of different stencils to give me some swirls and whirls and then left it to dry completely.

Next I  sprayed it with some Powertex Bister spray to start the colour on the background.

I have now used the yellow and green Bister sprays and I've added some lace, which I've soaked in Mod Podge and sprayed too. A couple of flourishes from Sue Wilson dies and the sentiment of "Dream" from Clarity Stamps have been added. Now came the fun bit - I had to completely enhance her face as she was lost and buried deep in the artwork and I needed to bring her to the foreground.

As you can see in this photo of the finished product again, it worked a treat. This will show how you can use a stencil to not only ink through but to use the stencil to enhance a picture or piece of artwork and make it your own.  I went to town completely on her eyes.  They were "cold" on the original stencil and by changing her hair it brought her completely forward on the canvas.  Some further shading of the hair, which is modelling paste and the face itself to help bring out that nose and mouth.  I finally used some gesso and gold and silver gilding wax to highlight areas to show depth and then I was done.  That made her more beautiful in my eyes and the whole artwork began to sit around her now.

I hope everyone really enjoys playing with their swirls, whirls and flourishes - I most certainly have. Have fun and good luck everyone!