What If I used Stencils in Combination with Background Papers?

The phrase "what if" has been rattling around in the back of my mind for the past few days.  I don't know about you but "what if " thoughts tend to be a part of my life.  What if I had done things differently or what if I'd taken a different path, more often than not those thoughts are filled with relief rather than regret, but in my art life the phrase "what if" takes on a completely different meaning.  What if is usually filled with excitement and anticipation, the what if that accompanies the start of a new project or a light bulb moment.  What if is not a bad statement about my life and it isn't a bad statement where my art is concerned.  I had one of those "what if" moments the other day when I came across background papers that I had worked on a year ago.  I found them in one of my many piles and thought ...HMMMMM!  What if?

I decided to go ahead and put my thoughts into action and began playing around with those background papers. In March 2011 I painted background papers and posted the technique on my blog.  They were a very popular blog post and I've spent the past year thinking what else could I do with them.  I used them for card making and some scrapbooking but I am always thinking of new ways to use an existing project to make it more current.  I thought that I  should take some of those papers that I had made and enhance them.

As many of you know who frequent my blog  I recently did a series of blog posts about using stencils and even invested in some new stencils.  One evening this past week I sat down and thought that I'd play with the new stencils,  and I remembered that stack of background papers and wondered what if I enhanced those.   I picked out one of the nondescript boring papers and thought that I would see what happened.  I began by randomly choosing one of the stencil screens.  I chose the floral stencil, I actually began thinking that I'd design a Christmas themed background but as you can see that didn't happen.

I placed the floral screen onto my nondescript green background paper and used the thinned down acrylics in a spray bottle that I used originally back in 2011, I randomly sprayed primary colors onto the green background.  Because I had used acrylic paint I could easily layer paint colors as long as each layer was dry.  The paint still seemed dull and nondescript.  I obviously needed to find a way to jazz it up a bit and stenciled white flowers over the sprayed stencil.  My next step was to go through some of my paint and find some interesting paints from the Deco Art line.   I decided to use a mix of Metallic, Neon, Glitter and regular paints.   I picked up the sponge and repositioned my stencil over the top of one of the floral areas and sponged blue metallic over the blue sprayed area and a beautiful rich color began to develop.  You will find that this frequently happens when you are working with layered paint colors.  The layering of paint develops a richness and vibrancy that you may not achieve otherwise.   Next I picked up on some red glitter paint on my sponge, repositioned my stencil again and sponged some red glitter paint over the top of the red areas that I had sprayed in the previous application.  Then added red metallic paint randomly to the area.  At that time I wondered "what if"  I picked up some yellow neon and sponged over another one of the stenciled areas and lastly sponged randomly throughout the paper wherever I felt I needed a little ZING.

I don't know about you but I think this piece rivals many scrapbooking papers out there, it was substantially cheaper, and I spruced up a boring nondescript paper.  Now I just need to decide how to use this.  Any suggestions?