Summer in the City and a Summer Hop with Nathalie and Friends

Welcome to a summer session of messy mixed media fun with Nathalie Kalbach and her fabulous Foam, Cling Rubber Stamp and Stencil Sets. You can see them all on the Stampendous website!

It's a hop so you'll want to jump to the rest of the blogs today, but remember Stampendous hops mean prizes! Take note of the details when you visit the Stampendous blog post today.

1. Stampendous Blog	4. Janelle Stollfus
2. Gwen Lafleur	5. Nathalie Kalbach Blog
3. Louise Healy

I gravitated to the Urban Scribble set for my project today after being inspired by Nathalie's Creative Squad's "My City Speaks To Me" pieces – Michelle Rydell, Cheiron Brandon and Marsha Valk.

Acrylic Paint and Marker Journal Page

This journal page is yet to be written in as I struggled to come up with words to write that explained what I was thinking about, so I asked my team what they would suggest and here are some great quotes–

Nature will always find a way.

Art is the tree of life. – William Blake

I will use a tree to teach me to gather strength from my deepest roots. 

Here are some fantastic sentiments that would work well.

Thoughtful Wishes Perfectly Clear Stamp Set	Encouraging Words Perfectly Clear Stamp Set

This is how I created my page.

I started with a single sheet of 11 x 17 inch quality paper that I purchased in a ream from a local paper store. I know it's a journal page, but the crease really restricts me, I'll later gather up all the journal pages and staple into a book with a long-reach stapler.

I made a monoprint with the Creative Palette for the sky and a wash where the buildings were planned to be stamped first adding gel medium to get a cushion to use the grid stencil from Urban Scribbles. Afterwards, spots of stenciling were added with templates from the retired Wired Stamp set.

The building stamp was layered using paper cut masks and paint was rolled onto the solid side of foam stamp with a brayer. The Cling Rubber stamp was inked up with Versafine Onyx Black ink and applied with the same mask routine as with the paint.

Street and sidewalks were hand painted and marked then the tree was painted freestyle with a round brush and outlined with paint markers.

The finishing touches were paint marker lines to make the building angles pop against the organic shape of the tree. That's it!

Now here's what I ended up thinking my quote would be for this page, ready? "It's time to uncover the shape of your soul." – Emily P. Freeman (back cover of "A Million Little Things")

What would your quote be?


Details:
Stamps: NKCFS03 Urban Scribbles, Kaffee Klatsch, Wired (Stampendous)
Paper: White book paper
Ink: Versafine™ Onyx Black Ink (Tsukineko) 
Accessories: Creative Palette (Stampendous), Acrylic paint in Ultramarine, Light Blue, Brilliant Yellow Green, Light Green, Burnt Sienna, Warm Grey, Burnt Umber, Gold Yellow, Cadmium Yellow Light Hue (Liquitex, Amsterdam and Master's Touch), acrylic paint marker set (Liquitex), open stock markers (Elmers), Gel Medium (Chromacryl)