Quirky Bird

Oh my gosh don't you just love Pinterest. When I need inspiration I love to pour through art and craft books and magazines, I am one of those people who have stacks and stacks of ripped out pages of things that caught my eye and journals full of quickly jotted down ideas. Then along comes Pinterest, I don't have to dig through my closet anymore to find that one page of inspiration or try to find my long lost idea in one of my many journals. I cherish these journals and stacks of stuff and still rely on them.... but really love that quick fix of just looking through my Pinterest boards.

About a year ago I saw some wonderful work on Pinterest using book pages, something I have always loved to do. As a recycle artist I have tons of old and rescued books and love the old pages, even the smell of an old book page puts me in heaven. I combined a little gesso, Zentangle® and Inktense pencils and had a great time drawing quirky little birds. I recently filmed a YouTube for Design Originals demonstrating this fun art project.

I also have a passion for stencils, so many artists are turning their personal styles into really beautiful stencil designs. When I went to the Craft and Hobby Association Trade Show earlier this year I finally got to meet one of my favorite artists, Mary Beth Shaw aka Stencil Girl. What I wouldn't give to have every single stencil in her line...but alas I had to choose. I had some fun with them recently, Mary Beth graciously posted my project on her blog today. Take a minute to scoot over there, she has guests artists on her blog all the time...and they come up with some fabulous ways to use stencils. 

Since I am in love with these stencils I decided to combine one of them with my birds and book pages,  this page was created with Shattered, I used gesso on the stencil and then colored it in with Inktense and outlined it all with a Sakura micron pen......fun!!