Michelle Garbutt is a stencil artist and decorative arts instructor from Ridgefield, Washington. She called me one day in a breathless state. She had gotten some Sheer Heaven from one of the stamp stores up there in the great Northwest, and she was really excited about how her stencil art looked on it. We had a lovely conversation and I asked her to please send me a sample or two.

When the package showed up, it was my turn to be breathless! I so wish you could see these in person. They have an ethereal quality that just doesn’t come through in scans.The 3D effect that Sheer Heaven can produce combines with Michelle’s masterful shading to give a wonderful depth to the piece.

Since Michelle is an instructor, I asked if she could share a few tips that would help the rest of us improve our stencil art.

These samples are all done with ColorBox pigment inks, although Michelle also likes to work with chalk pastels.

With either, she uses a 3/8" medium goat hair stencil brush. These brushes can smell when wet, but a good washing with baby shampoo will take care of that.

She uses the brush to pick up two colors at once - and changes the proportions of each on the brush each time she re-inks. This creates the random shading that is found in nature and makes things look very realistic.

Always apply the lightest colors first and remember that nature uses quite a few colors just creating what we would call a “purple” grape, There’s a little lavender, blue, purple, magenta, and even green in that pallette. This is true of most things and the artist must train her eye to see those components.

When Michelle uses pastel chalks (she prefers the very affordable but hard to find Koss brand), she takes the brush directly to the chalks to load it - after scraping off the coating to expose the softer chalk beneath.

Michelle recommends stencils from American Traditional.