Why did I not use my usual bright rainbow colors that I had on my palette? It was because of an O.O.P.S., an Outstanding Opportunity Presenting Suddenly, that happened as I created a full page of pattern in my art journal with just one small stencil.

Watch How I use a small stencil to fill an entire art journal page on YouTube.

The fineliner video mentioned in play is here.

The bright orange paint became a rusty deeper orange thanks to a dirty stencil.  O.O.P.S.!  This completely shifted the color vibe.

Notice how the paint ran under the stencil in places and gave it a loose mixed media vibe?  That’s because I did 2 things, I used plenty of paint and I stenciled in a side to side motion. If you prefer a crisper look when stenciling, then use a small amount of paint and pounce in a very up and down motion and the paint won’t run under the stencil.

Size doesn’t matter with stencils.  A smaller stencil can fill any size art journal page (or any other surface for that matter). I rotated the Open Buildings stencil as I moved it from one area to the next and didn’t use equal parts as I filled in the page.

The open spaces were ideal for adding pattern and writing. Using a fineliner, I added 1’s and 0’s.  New to fineliners and how they work?  I have a video explaining more about them.

The Caution washi tape caught my eye and I thought it was a wonderfully silly to add caution to this page since there had been zero caution exercised while making it.

Writing on paint takes its toll on pens, even if the paint is dry. However, when I use a cheap office store pen, I don’t worry too much. One catch with cheap ball point pens is the ink will often run if it gets wet so I tend to use it near the end of a page.

An OOPS started this page and I wanted to get that word on here.  Using a rolling alphabet stamp I added the word OOPS anywhere it could fit.

Thanks to the OOPS, I love where the play went, even if it wasn’t where I expected it to go. This wasn’t my first OOPS and it won’t be my last!  You can see You can see more of my OOPSies here.

I had a plan and didn’t follow it from the very first moment.  I had intended to just cover up part of a ho-hum layer, but in a flash, the whole thing was covered in gesso.  In fact, it seemed that every time I had a plan, I didn’t follow it!

Watch Wet paint + a Stencil + a Baby Wipe on YouTube.

Once I had gesso’d the entire panel, my fingers ended up in the paint.  When finger painting, I do 2 things. I use a barrier hand cream and I make sure my paints are non toxic.

There’s an article here explaining what symbol to look for on your paints here. Know your paints, take reasonable precautions and decide for you what you are comfortable doing.

Another plan that went awry, was the plan to just put a little pattern from the Triangular Pathways stencil on the background.  It brought me such joy to smear the baby wipe over the stencil in the wet paint, that I didn’t want to stop. So I didn’t!

When I work on top of a piece from who-knows-when that was made with who-knows-what supplies sometimes colors unexpectedly bleed through.  The hint of purple at the top inspired me to ditch the planned deep turquoise for purple.

I had fallen in love with the background, so much so that the idea of covering it up was painful. But it needed something more.  So I compromised.  I decided to put something very small on it.

In a drawer, I found an O.O.P.S., an Outstanding Opportunity Presenting Suddenly, from another project.  The colorized vintage photo (that was too small for that project) was the exact size I needed for this one.

My play usually involves some scribble journaling, but not this time.  Another case of the plan going out the window.  I found the words, Wisdom Is, on my Wall of Words stencil.

My love for the background guided my final decisions on this, to use a very small something on it and let the background shine.  Appropriately, this was not where I had planned to go!