This was a peanut butter in my chocolate situation. These two stencils were out on my table when I realized they’d work exceptionally well together. Even though I had a direction I was going, there were challenges. And all of them had to do with my impatience while art journaling.

What’s the best paint for creating a crisp stenciled image? Any thick heavy bodied paint. Also, use a small amount of paint and stencil in an up and down motion. That’s how even an impatient messy stenciler like myself can got a crisp details using the Barbed Wire stencil.

Little things can make a big difference. Like how you place the stencil so you don’t have to worry too much about smearing the paint. I was way too impatient to wait for each butterfly to dry before going on to the next one.

When you’re stenciling just one part of a stencil, say like a butterfly, you can use something as simple as a Post It note to mask off the areas you don’t want to accidentally get paint through.

That was too much work for me, so I stenciled away without any masking. And that’s why there were 2 spots of over stenciled paint on there that I could. not. stop. looking. at.

But just a little dab of white paint and they just covered up. Nobody knows it ever happened. Well, expect for you and me.

You can use more than paint when you’re stenciling. A pen, a plain old everyday pen, was used to stencil the word hope from my Uplifting Words stencil.

Why did I choose hope for the title for this page? The barbed wire represents the struggles and uncertainty in the world right now. The colorful butterflies represent the hope that things are going to be able to get through this together.

Here are the supplies used. Some of these links are affiliate links which means I get a small percentage. For example, I’m an Amazon Associate & I earn from qualifying purchases. It doesn’t cost you anything extra and you get a really good feeling knowing that you are helping keep the free tutorials coming!

A lot can happen in one single pull when gel printing. Texture, pattern, and color can all happen simultaneously! I’m dipping my brayer in paint as I do this, and you’ll see why this is helpful in the video plus you’ll see which actor I credit for sparking the design idea of these stencils.

When you use 2 colors of paint, a light and dark of the same color, with this technique you get a subtle effect of colors blending. Plus, you get a ghost print using the Overlapping Circles Filled stencil that looks very different from the first pull.

This time, it was 4 colors of paint blending together. You can avoid mud by using all warm colors (as I did) or all cool colors.

This stencil collection is an exploration of how everything’s connected. But what got me thinking of that months before COVID happened?

Six degrees of Kevin Bacon. While playing that game my mind went to how things overlap, how connections exist even where you don’t think they do. Now that the world is facing this virus together, it’s a reminder of how the entire planet is connected.

Along with getting pattern, texture, and color variation all in one pull there is another benefit. It’s a very speedy way to stencil. If you’re at all impatient and like to do things quickly, stencils and a gel plate are the way to go!