Primary, Secondary, Tertiary Circles!

Welcome to another fun blog hop using Pam Carriker's "Primary, Secondary, Tertiary" stencil!

Pam Carriker's Primary, Secondary, Tertiary stencil

And, of course, the first thing I want to do is paint my color wheel with it.  Who could resist?  Well, I am resisting, at least for the moment.  Because the other thing this stencil reminds me of may be less obvious, but it strikes me as being similar to the shape of an instrument on an aircraft panel, or a compass of sorts.  That is how I intend to use it.

I have been thinking about doing a page related to a 25th anniversary road trip I took in 2012 with my friend, Karen.  We drove up the Pacific Coast Highway for the first time together in 1987 from Los Angeles to San Francisco, again a few years ago, and in 2012 we began in San Jose and headed north as far as Mendocino before heading south to Los Angeles.  It was while we were in Mendocino that we discovered the Montgomery Grove of redwoods.  This was my first encounter with the giant redwoods, but it has been a lifelong dream.  I wrote about this before, but for the record:  as a kid growing up in land-locked Kansas I wanted more than anything to see whales and redwood trees.  It took me longer than it should have to accomplish it, but it was an exquisite moment when I finally did.

Mendocino is such a beautiful place.

Here is an image of the coastline nearby.

Walking into the grove of the biggest giant redwoods was very humbling.

Can you see me?

(Lower left edge of the tree)

It was mind-boggling.

I created a quilt about it.

Confession:  I flipped the image because I made a technical error when I was making the "tree"

out of silk broadcloth.  Oops.  I'll just call it "artistic license".

I thought it would be fun to use the stencil to make a journal page.  I used two car rental maps I picked up on the trip.  I like to keep these for collage purposes.  Occasionally, I have to have an intervention with myself and cull some of these out.  Generally, I'm happy I bring them home because they are a nice "layer" in my work.

FIrst, I used Jessica Sporn's Flying Tulip stencil as background texture.

I tore a portion of the Mendocino map and layered it to the page with gel medium, 

Then used the Primary, Secondary, Tertiary stencil over a portion of it.

I did the same with a previously over-painted map on a watercolor postcard.

These were layered in place so that they perfectly overlap one another in terms of the stencil.

Taking another portion of my rental car map and positioning it so that the Mendocino National forest

is in the "bullseye" of the stencil, I glued the map in place and stenciled it with a transparent layer 

of green paint.

I moved the stencil over the page a bit more using opaque white paint and some 

more transparent green.

Then, I simply blotted a light layer of paint diagonally over the surface to 

mute things a bit.

This is the page prior to the postcard layer.

Positioning the card in place to match the background pattern of the stencil,

I glued the card in place.

(using Yes!) glue..

and a palette knife

Here is my sophisticated set of weights to secure the layers of paper nice and flat while drying.

Next, I used barrier letters and stencil letters to create "redwood" on the left side.

and "trip" with barrier letters set in place (this is prior to adding paint)

blotting the barrier letters with paint

I outlined the letters a bit in order to increase their visibility on the page

I added ransom numbers to the upper right corner.

Finished!

Don't miss out on all the fun!  Here are the other participating artists in the blog hop:

StencilGirl Talk

Pam Carriker

Carolyn Dube

Janet Joehlin

Corrine Gilman

Linda Kittmer

me

Maria McGuire