Sacred Hearts Bloghop!

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Hello everyone! I am thrilled to be the kicker-offer for the Sacred Hearts blog hop, a shorty but goody! We’ve got a nice line up artists here, be sure to visit their blog on their day of the hop. As usual, we will be giving away a free set of stencils to one lucky person who leaves a comment on each blog. Including this one! I will leave comments open until Friday night, even though the blog hop ends on Thursday :-)  Here’s the lineup:
Now it’s my turn to show you some art I made with the Sacred Hearts stencils. I’ve been playing around with these for awhile now (the perks of getting them first!) I started playing with the gelli plate, my “go to” for inspiration. photo 4 photo 3 photo 2
Each one started off on a background that was already pulled on the gelli plate. And the best ones were the second pulls, which made them a bit more grungy. And check this one out – My gelli plate was really dirty from a last minute demo before I packed it all away to move – without cleaning the paint off the plate (gasp!) I call it “Scourge of the heart”
photo 1
Well, those are pretty cool and I’ll probably use them as collage fodder, but my  heart wasn’t really in them. (bwaha no pun intended!) So I started over, and decided to do a graffiti-like journal page. I sprayed inks, dripped and splattered, stamped and stenciled.
photo 1   photo 2(6)
It’s pretty cool…and has plenty of room to the left of the image for journaling. I wanted to do one more project but was “stuck” with the muse. I was getting worried that I wouldn’t come up with anything, but I should just trust myself that it will happen, because it always does. Usually at the last minute! (My muse, the procrastinator!) A few days ago, I was having a really bad day, one of those days where you find yourself repeating a mantra in your head over and over to help you keep it together. I was driving and blubbering that mantra and as soon as I got home, went into the studio to get it all out. I thought that the rays of the Immaculate Stencil was begging for words. I love the symbolism of the compassionate, motherly love. Just what I needed. Here is the finished piece. It was quite easy to make.
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I started out with a piece of paper pulled from my gelli plate, with a very dark backgound. I put nice thick white paint through the stencil after taping it down.
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And ended up with this:
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I love the juxtaposition of these two textures, the shiny background and the white matte paint. I brainstormed a list of words – It’s from an exercise from a class I took with Tam at Willowing – it’s called “My Wish for You.” This represents the Divine Mother telling me what I deserve and what I AM worthy of.
photo 4(1)
After I wrote all the words in, I found it was “too white” so I grabbed some Dylusions Sprays and stained the white parts, letting it dry a bit before wiping to get an uneven covering. I stamped the title on the bottom with some letter stamps and outlined them with a white Gelly Roll pen. I wanted to make this something I could hang on the wall or lean on a shelf so I trimmed it and mounted it on a piece of white foam core and taped the edges with some coordinating washi tape.
photo 4(2)
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Thank you, Muse, for helping me bring out what was in my heart and what I needed to hear most at the time.
I hope you enjoyed this post. Remember, one lucky commenter will win a set of these stencils, I will pick on Friday night. If you already bought a set, you are welcome to receive another to share or give away, or you can let me know and I can pick another person. And please remember to leave your contact information so I can get a hold of you!
Have a wonderful week, and hop on! xo Lisa