Tracy Krueger: 2020

A to Z StencilGirl® Art Journal Collaboration & Challenge

Hello all of my crafty friends! With all of the challenges in the world right now, hope all is well with you.

Here is a short blog post of a collaboration/challenge that Tina Walker created for StencilGirl®. Everyone picked a "topic" for a Journal from A to Z. Every letter had to represent something from that topic. I picked "Cities".

I picked Cities that started with each letter of the alphabet. I tried not to repeat countries, but that proved to be difficult. I chose an image from that city as a backdrop to my page which was stenciled with anywhere from 1 to 3 stencils. A couple of the images I used actual photos that I was fortunate enough to be able to take myself. I then created covers and hand-stitched it. As you can see it ended up being quite the chunky "little" book.

Enjoy the photos of my book and check out the StencilGirl® Blog for the other participants.

Take care!

Rainy Day StencilGirl® Collaboration and Challenge

Hello everyone! It's been quite awhile! As you know, life gets in the way sometimes of our artsy creations. When Tina Walker sent the word out of a new collaboration a few months back, I was all over it! This one immediately got the juices flowing on all kinds of possibilities.

Using an umbrella (any kind of umbrella), alter it and use StencilGirl® stencils. This was one of those challenges where I had a difficult time getting the ideas from my head "onto paper". Anything that "could" go wrong "did" go wrong. But in the end I LOVE it and it proudly hangs in my family room.

First thing I did was de-construct the umbrella, taking the handle and frame off of the fabric. I gave the fabric a quick coat of clear gesso so that the paint would have something to adhere to. I gathered 5 or 6 springy colors of acrylic paint and some stencils (in the end I used 13 stencils) and began covering the umbrella.

I knew I wanted to cut the fabric in some sort of fashion so I grabbed a circular stencil and in opposite sections of the umbrella, penciled in the circles and cut them out. I gathered similar colored embroidery floss (to that of the paint) and began sewing the floss onto the umbrella.

There were two other opposite sections that I cut out irregular 'X' from a stencil and tried the same technique, but it did NOT work the way I wanted to. So I grabbed a piece of white felt and applied paint through that stencil onto the felt. After it was dry, I cut them out and sewed the shapes over the cutout 'X' shapes on the umbrella. Problem solved!

I added wire to the back to give it that 3D umbrella look and I wired it to a 38" x 38" wooden frame that I created (with the hubby's help). The last thing I did was take part of the original umbrella frame and cut off four of the arms and the handle and glued the handle to the remaining attached two arms. When that was dry, I drilled a hole in the top of the frame for the armature to sit in. Added glue to the hole and placed the armature in the hole. For extra support I wired the armature to the frame.

Can I just say how happy I was that this project was done?!? I hope you enjoy my final project pictures below! I have also listed all of the stencils I used below.