StencilGirl® and Seth Apter - Wow! - Blog Hop

Hi, servus and welcome to an especially exciting blog post today!

As the banner indicates, it's time for another blog hop - this time "WOW!" and StencilGirl Products have teamed up to showcase the new fabulous embossing powders (and Mixed Media Embossing Brush) designed by wonderful Seth Apter and to demonstrate how well these can be used together with StencilGirl stencils to create the most amazing projects with the special wow-factor (sorry, couldn't resist the pun).


Designers from the WOW! and StencilGirl Products design teams are sharing their projects (WOW!'s designers have shared theirs already yesterday...today it's StencilGirl's turn) to inspire you and introduce several ways on how to use Seth's cool WOW! embossing powder Trios and - my favourite - the Mixed Media Embossing Brush (I will tell you why I love it so much a little later in this post in the tutorial section).

At the bottom of this post you will find the links to the other teamies' blogs and projects and learn how to participate in the blog hop and about the great  GIVE AWAY that is waiting for three lucky persons...


But first let's take a close look on Seth Apter's new WoW! embossing powders and how they go together with StencilGirl stencils!
This is the project I have created for this blog hop:

It was all done using - of course - Seth Apter Wow! embossing powders, StencilGirl stencils...and DecoArt Americana acrylic paints.
The panel my altered brush sits on is an old bamboo chop board that I created a background on using Seth's "monoprinting-with-paper" technique (one of my favs).

And as I love to use found objects and left over snippets of previous projects in my work (that I keep in a little wooden box on my desk for inspiration), there is also a left over piece of self made Dresden trim (done with one of the 3D Impresslits folders designed by Tim Holtz), a frozen charlotte, some dictionary scraps and a small piece of linen ribbon to find.

Here are the products and substrates I've used...I always love to have quite a stash of stencils at hand when I start a project so I can pick the ones that fit best while the project evolves and takes me on its own journey (so some of the ones shown here weren't used in the end).

 I've used these StencilGirl stencils to create my altered brush panel: 

- Urban Insiders Bar stencil by Seth Apter

- Text and Texture Transform stencil by Seth Apter

- Past Present Future stencil by Seth Apter

- ATC Mixup Apter stencil by Seth Apter

- medium sized stencil from the January 2019 "Shaw-Apter Mash Up!" Stencil Club Set 

- medium sized stencil from the October 2016 Stencil Club Set by Mary Beth Shaw

The two WOW! embossing powder Trios designed by Seth hold six amazing powders that go by the intriguing names of Blue Moon, Sea of Tranquility and Space Dust (from the "Cosmic" Trio) and Etched Platinum, Weathered Gold and Crusty Copper (from the "Metalz" Trio). The thin bottle with the yellow liquid to the left holds Seth's "Mixed Media Embossing Brush" and an embossing liquid that can be applied to almost any surface by using the brush that is included in the lid.

On my project I went wild and tried the powders and the Mixed Media Brush on as many different substrates as I could - on wood, on paper, on top of acrylic paint, on the brush's bristles and also the metal part, on left overs from chipboard tokens from some board games and on some linen ribbon...and it all worked like a dream!

What I especially love about the Mixed Media Brush is that the liquid has an extremely long open time (compared to other embossing liquids from embossing dabbers) and you can vary the thickness and amount of liquid applied by spreading some of it with the brush on a palette first and using a cosmetic sponge for dabbing only a really thin coat of that onto a surface (which also works extremely well with stencils).
A little of the liquid goes a long, long way and applying too much of it can cause your embossing powders to kind of swim on top and drift away during the melting process. So less is more in most cases, but on certain substrates - like the brush's bristles or fabric for example - you need a thicker coat than a dabber would provide. So the Mixed Media Brush is really versatile and opens up a lot of new possibilities (which makes my mixed media heart sing).

My bamboo board and the ugly red brush were primed using DecoArt Chalky Finish paint "primitive". 

Then I picked some DecoArt Americana acrylic paints and put together one of my go-to colour schemes. I applied layers of paint by first brushing it onto a piece of card stock and then pressing that onto the board - a kind of mono printing technique that is perfect for layering and creating depth and that I've picked up with one of Seth Apter's great online classes.

Voilà - the base for my altered brush and for the next layer that was to be done with stencils and embossing powders was finished!

To tone down my brush I dry brushed it with some dark brown acrylic paint. Then I used the Text and Texture Transform stencil and orange acrylic paint to add the focal word to the brush's handle. I applied the paint through the stencil using a very small stencil brush.

I added more orange words from the stencil to the bamboo panel. Before the paint was completely dry I sprinkled some Sea of Tranquility embossing powder on top, tipped off the excess and heat embossed the traces left on the stencilled words. This added a kind of patina look as it didn't adhere to the whole design.

To create a kind of metal rivets I used two different sizes of left over circles from board game chipboard tokens and heat embossed these with Weathered Gold and Crusty Copper.

The label was heat embossed using Space Dust embossing powder.

Then I fused the smaller "metal" bits with the larger ones by simply putting them together and re-heating. This way the bits on top sank into the molten embossing powder below and once everything had cooled down it was beautifully fused without the use of any glue.

Two stripes of embossing powders (Space Dust and Sea of Tranquility) got added to the very ends of the brush's bristles.

More heat embossing on the panel was to follow! I used Sea of Tranquility again together with a stencil to create the beautiful drip lines. You can see the cosmetic sponge to the very right. Right left to it I had spread some embossing liquid from the Mixed Media Brush flask on my palette (but that doesn't show in the picture). From there I picked some up with the sponge and applied it thinly through the stencil. It gave perfectly crisp outlines!
(I used the left overs on the palette about half an hour later and it still worked smoothly - that's what I really call a long open time!!!)

You can also see the crisp lines from the design from Seth's Urban Insiders Bar stencil - this time done in "Blue Moon" embossing powder.  I had again used the cosmetic sponge through the stencil to apply the Mixed Media Brush liquid from my palette.

Etched Platinum went to the widest section of the metal wrap of the brush and was also used to fix the frozen charlotte in place.

I added some more heat embossing here and there - trying to repeat all the colours used in at least three different spots to fuse everything visually.

Using a fine tip Faber Castell PITT artist pen I outlined some of the designs for better visibility and more interest.

I finally found I needed a kind of frame for my frozen charlotte, so I die cut a circular label holder from heavy cardstock and heat embossed that with Weathered Gold (using the still not dried out left overs from the Mixed Media Brush liquid on my palette!). The label holder looks almost like the real metal thing, doesn't it?!

Three more tiny circle chipboard left overs were heat embossed with Crusty Copper for two nail heads for the label holder and one nail head that was to go on the end of the brush handle.

The piece got finished off by adding some text from the dictionary page scraps and gluing everything in place. Before that I had also added thin stripes of Weathered Gold and Blue Moon the the brush - the latter was applied to the linen ribbon (to the right). With the Mixed Media Brush that was no problem at all.

The brush got fixed to the panel by using thick heavy duty sticky foam pads. The other bits were glued in place using tacky glue and matte DecoArt Decou-Page.

Some close ups: 

My panel tells about stories lost, stories within, stories that are yet incomplete (the stories of our lives), the acceptance of incompleteness in general, it tells about the "principles of trusting" - that come into play when we take a "leap" and put our art (and soul) out there and only dare to do so because we are able to "lean" on our faith in the quality of our own art.

And now let's finally talk about the ...

There's a $35 Gift Certificate to StencilGirl® Products,

a $35 Gift Certificate to Seth Apter’s Shop

AND a $25 Gift Certificate to Wow!

Enter to win by leaving a comment below.

Then be sure to visit the other blogs in the hop and comment to win.


Tina Walker
Debi Adams
Mary C. Nasser
Claudia Neubacher (you are here now)
Kate Yetter

The more blogs you comment on, the more chances you have to WIN!

Three winners will be chosen at random from all blog comments!

(Only one comment per blog please.)

You have until Tuesday, September 22nd at 11:59PM Central Time to leave your comments.

Winners will be announced on Wednesday, September 23rd.

Good luck, everyone,

and as always

hugs and happy crafting!

Claudia 

xxx