Affirmative Matchbook - a StencilGirl Project and Instagram Hop

 Servus, everyone!

It's in the middle of the night over here and I am posting about my latest project for StencilGirl Products as we are having an Instagram hop with two giveaways for you to win (which starts in about twenty minutes at 10 p.m. their time seen from now that I am writing this post - which is 5 a.m on the next day at my place ;) . I hope to see the deer (that have recently started visiting our garden) in about an hour, before I go back to bed and catch a little more sleep. 

But back to "business" - the Instagram hop and my little matchbook! 

Our wonderful boss, Mary Beth Shaw, has recently sent all on the team little surprise parcels with paints, media, mixed media tools and other little goodies and the plan was to use these on a project that would get shared in an Instagram hop - which is where we are right now. Thank you once more, boss, for the great goodies - love them all!!!! xxx

The picture shows all of these to the right and the StencilGirl stencils and die cut matchbook (using the Tim Holtz "Matchbook" die). 

I used stencils designed by Tracy Evans, Wendy Aikin, Kristin Williams and Seth Apter. 

I started with adding black and natural white chalk paints for a first layer. The black paint got scraped on using a palette knife, then the white was added on top using the architectural stencil and a stipple brush. 

That was followed by scraping on some yellow chalk paint with the palette knife again and adding marks in brown here and there...

I then continued with a layer of sprayed on Cerise IZink spray ink die using Seth Apter's latest Grunge Strips & Borders stencil. 

The ink mixed beautifully with the yellow and natural white layers underneath and created awesome tones from intense pink to warm bright orange. I really loved that!

The sticky cork dots I was given were perfect for adding depth and texture! I painted these yellow and white...

...and while these were set aside to dry I stencilled the lovely faces to the inside of the matchbook (which I had primed with black chalk paint). Next I used some of the Sharpie and watercolour brush pens to add marks to the cork dots. 

Once these had dried I glued them to the matchbook cover and added black shades around them using the watercolour brush pen and a detail brush to smudge the drawn lines around the cork dots. 

To finish up the project I added some word stickers with affirmative quotes and outlined the stencilled faces with the yellow Sharpie. 

Et voilá!

All the infos on the Instagram hop and how to win one of the two giveaways are to be found on Instagram (of course) - simply look out for #stencilgirl and/or #winstencils. Good luck and have a lovely day! 

Claudia xxx