Technique of the Week: Distress Crayon Stenciling

Recently I've been playing with my Distress Crayons and I like the idea of using them with stencils. This technique is actually from Sally Penley, who is a recent, and very popular teacher at Art 'n Soul. When Sally was at ANS to teach a Pastel Dusting class, I asked her if she would mind trying out a similar technique that she was doing with her pastels, and try it with the Distress crayons. What she did was amazing, and honestly, I'm not sure if I did it justice,, but I do like what I ended up with.

Here is what Sally made. She just dashed this off during the class, that's how good she is. When we schedule more classes with Sally, be sure to sign up!

by Sally Penney

I used the Magenta tulip stencil TM150, the Magenta stamp 07.907.L Multilingual Happy Birthday, Magenta MNU-015 Red Nuance. I also used the Distress crayons Peeled Paint and Festive Berries. To cut my panel, I used Lawn Fawn die LF788 Small Stitched Rectangles and cut it out of Tim Holtz watercolor paper. Watercolor paper is not required for this technique, but I like the texture of it. To cut the strip for the sentiment, I used MFT Die 463 Blueprints 13. 

I taped my panel down to my work surface, and taped the Magenta stencil in place over it, using painter's tape. I used the Distress crayons to color onto the stencil and panel both, and I used my finger to pull the color into the open areas of the panel. Sally's favorite tool for this would be a Viva paper towel, but since I didn't have one, I resorted to using my fingers. If you try this, only work a small area at a time, and try not to get very big blobs of the crayon on your stencil or card.

After pulling Festive Berries color into all the petal areas of the tulip, I used the Peeled Paint to color the leaves and stems. I then colored the petals and leaves with clear Wink of Stella glitter pen, and I decided I wanted speckles over the top. I mixed some Red Nuance with pearly water, and flicked it over the card.

To finish, I cut a small piece of black cardstock using one of the small dies from Blueprints 13 from MFT. The die was actually a little longer than I wanted, so I measured the sentiment, and pulled one end of the strip past the edge of the die and cut it again, ending up with a deckled edge on each end of my shortened strip. 

This photo shows my stamp on top of the black paper to measure how long I wanted it to be. After removing the stamp, I cut the paper for a second time to shorten it.

I then chose the top line of the Magenta Multilingual Happy Birthday stamp, and stamped it onto my black strip with Versamark ink, using my mini MISTI tool. I embossed it with JudiKins White Diamond embossing powder, and added an exclamation mark with a white gel pen. The sentiment was popped up with foam tape, and the panel was matted with Stardream Jupiter cardstock. I scattered a few sequins on the finished card.

I found this technique easy and fun to do. I hope you will give it a try! For a more complete list of materials, please visit my Backporch blog post here.