The Common Denominator: March 2014

Monday, March 31, 2014

StencilGirl Blog Hop Featuring NEW Artist Andrea Matus deMeng

What a thrilling day for StencilGirl Products!
I have wanted Andrea to come on board for us for, well....for a long time. Every time we would see each other (at a teaching gig), she and I would talk again but fail to develop a plan. This has been going on for a stupid (slaps self in head) amount of time. But the thing is, Andrea is a mom, an artist, a teacher, a wife, I could go on and on.......not to mention my schedule.....we are both super busy girls and life just kinda snuck up on us.
So I am absolutely beyond delighted to introduce Andrea Matus deMeng as the newest StencilGirl artist.
Her stencils completely R-O-C-K, as I knew they would. I imagined she would design stencils with an edge - sort of tattoo meets sophisticated beauty. Somehow she knew exactly what I wanted even though I didn't verbalize it well. I can't wait to work with all her stencils, but for this Hop, I chose the Fowl Play stencil and the Free as a Bird stencil.
I am gaga for these birds. I love that they come in 2 sizes with slightly different looks and faces.

I should have taken a picture of the stencils before I got them dirty, eh? Hmmm, so what's new?
Working once again in my journal, I used a Sofft sponge to dab Pan Pastel over the stencil. My background pages were pretty busy from the start and the blue I chose didn't 'pop' as much as I had hoped so I decided to try something different.

Being as it was late at night and I was too lazy to get the paint out, I scraped a little 'pan pastel powder' onto my palette and then added gesso (plus a drop of water) to it. Using this 'paint' and a couple of Pitt Pens, I was able to paint this bird. We are talking 3 seconds max.
And it doesn't even look like I used a stencil so much, does it?
Wowzers!
Now I am *really* gaga for these birds.

Enjoy the Hop! I can't wait to see what everyone has done.

Blog Hop Order

StencilGirl Talk

Andrea Matus deMeng

Mary Beth Shaw (you are here)

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Monday, March 24, 2014

StencilGirl and Lost Coast Design Blog Hop

First 'truth be known' in this post.....I am not a big rubber stamp user. Back in the day, that is pretty much all I did and then I moved away from stamps. But I met Linda (owner of Lost Coast Designs) on the retreat circuit several years ago. She has some super cool stamps, the type that draw me in - ones you can use in the background of artwork and they will blend right in with the rest of the mixed media. Stamps that don't look so much like....well......stamps.

These are the two stamps that I picked; here comes the 2nd 'truth be known'.....I had this plan to make a real piece of art, using these stamps along with a Thermofax from one of my photographs. Homage to beach grass or some such thing. I was really excited about it, you know how that goes, right?
Ahem.
Life intervened, the deadline for this Blog Hop looming, my column for Somerset due, teaching gig on the horizon.....I ended up simply working in my journal.
And here comes the 3rd 'truth be known' statement.....that is about all the art I make these days. Journal pages.
But I digress.

Here is one half of the spread. It probably isn't finished, I tend to go back and back and back to these spreads. The grasses are a very nice edition to the page though and I even like that goofy eggplant color, which basically represents one of just a few stamp pads that I own (plus the Gold I also used).

I had to put grass on the other side too, I have a compulsion for symmetry, don't cha know!?!
This was good ole simple stamping - stamp plus inkpad, then a tad of blotting with my baby wipe. Easy peasy, nice quick result. You gotta love stamps, huh?
Hope you enjoy our Hop today.

Blog Hop Order
StencilGirl Talk
LeighSBDesigns

Mary Beth Shaw (you are here)

Mary Nasser

Cherri Robb

Judy Shea

Bibiana Martinez-Ziegler

Karen McAlpine
Leslie Tucker Jenison

DominoARTblog