I am a very careful planner.  I think 20 steps ahead.  Creating for me is very calculated and controlled. I can’t even type that with a straight face.  I am the polar opposite of a controlled planner when I play.  But you’ll see where I got stuck making this and how a penny rescued me!

This page all started with a paper made Gelli® printing a while ago.  This was a clean up print using my Arched Aqueducts stencil that was inspired by Roman architecture.  I love looking at ruins, especially ancient Roman ones.

My heart is on cloud nine whenever I get to see the old crumbling buildings and bridges so I decided to capture that with the dancers from my Learning to Dance stencil in hot pink.

Just two colors on this art journal page? Not for long!  I brought in green, yellow, and blue so that more of rainbow was represented!  Was I thinking and concentrating when I did this? Nope…just coloring in the white spaces in the arches.

Stenciling with a cosmetic sponge made quick work of getting a title on there with the Learning to Dance stencil.  The stenciling didn’t take long but I got stuck in the decision process.

Straight and lined up with the top of the page or angled and lined up the the orange arches? I went back and forth. So much drama.   I was acting like this was a life altering decision- so I flipped a coin.

Decision made.  The wise  penny chose for me.What felt like a monumental decision took just second and then I was back to playing!

If you’d like to know more about art journaling and stenciling, I have a free downloadable workshop called Permission to Play that you can jump in and join the fun.  You can find all the details here.

The muse inspired me with rainbow rain and she wanted it nice and straight and measured.  All I was all in until the measured part…but I did get the look of measuring without going any where near a ruler.  How? I let the stencil do all the hard work!

This 4×4 raindrop stencil is part of the Sand and Sea Collection I designed for this month’s StencilClub offering.  I have another video sharing more you can do with this stencil on StencilGirl Talk (and all the details about StencilClub are there too).

Check out the video and see how not a single ruler was used as I printed the words on my inkjet printer and got that all perfectly lined up so it fit the front of my card magically.

Watch How to let a stencil do the hard work instead of measuring and add some sparkle with Glitter Paste on YouTube.

The card says, “Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning to dance in the rain.”  The big question that plagued me, was I going to print that out by hand?

Since I have a love hate relationship with my handwriting, I let my inkjet printer handle the words.  No measuring to get this cut to match the exact card size I need.  How?  Its easier to show than tell, so check out the video above.

With my Learning to Dance stencil, this playful dancer is ready for some rainbow rain.

The rainbow rain was great, but I wanted sparkle. Bring on the  Glitter Paste!

This is the kind of rain I’d love to see fall from the sky any day…but since the rain doesn’t look like this in my neighborhood, I’ll just have to stick with stenciling rainbow rain!

You can see how I turned these raindrops into bursting flowers over at StencilGirl Talk! And you bet, there is no measuring involved!

Here are all 3 of the stencils in the collection I designed for this month’s StencilClub for StencilGirl.  You can find all the details about it here.