Let me introduce Jessica Sporn ( drum roll)

The day job has overtaken me this week.

Sometimes I have weeks like this. At the beginning of the week everything looks very organised and well paced but by the middle of the week it's clear that the best laid plans of mice and men have somewhat gone awry. 

When that happens I have a little meander around the Internet world and absorb other people's creativity in place of my own.

Sometime ago,on one of these little jaunts, I discovered a lovely American lady called Jessica Sporn. She is a mixed media artist, I think based in New York, and she produces lovely journal pages and mixed media canvases. She also designed stencils for an American company called Stencil Girl.

What's great about Jessica is that she produces really clear videos which she publishes on YouTube and on her blog which show her creative process. She positions the camera very clearly and she is very generous in sharing her techniques and explaining what she does. I particularly like the way she takes a commercial stencil and puts her own stamp on it. 

Now I'm not a great one for using commercial stencils because I always feel that they are somebody else's design and I want to use my own design, but it has to be said that there are some advantages to using them, not least of which you don't have to sit for ages with a craft knife painstakingly cutting out thin lines! 

So it is very useful to get tips on how you can use a commercial stencil and use it in your own art.

Here is a very nifty recent example – a video that Jessica published on YouTube on 3 June.

http://youtu.be/sO7PC9DVfE0

It is worth watching for the painting tip alone – the way she creates lighting shade on a flower petal very very simply.

Enjoy!