Playing around with the tree stencil

The windswept tree stencil from Stencilgirl.com caught my eye and so I wanted to try a few possibilities. I made several experiments with alcohol inks, paint and distress ink in my journal. I  have two final pieces to share-- I made the colorful one on canvas with Dylusions paint over collage text. You'll see the messages hidden within the tree. This was a gift for my friend, Mary Cameron.

I also wanted to show the stencil with a positive design (as opposed to the negative stencil).  I sprayed the background with Dye-na-flow inks and then traced the stencil before painting the tree. I used one of my favorite tree quotes as typed text strips. You can see that cropping the stencil works well for a vertical orientation, too.

The end of summer always reminds me of how much I love of being in nature, so I'm hanging on by creating pages about the trees I find so comforting.