Kelly Rae Roberts style file folder

This evening, I attended Stamp Club, a monthly workshop hosted by DebZ of the Rubber Stamp Plantation. Lori Mitrulevich led us in creating a file folder decorated in the style of Kelly Rae Roberts. First, we took a piece of cardstock and wrote words on the paper. We then cut the paper into different sized squares and rectangles. We arranged the pieces onto the outside of our blank file folders and glued them into place. Next, Lori pre-selected a bunch of green papers and a bunch of pink papers and had us cut them up into squares and rectangles so that the colored papers would be glued in the spaces between the pieces with handwriting on them. We used music sheets and book pages to fill in the remaining spaces until the entire folder was covered with papers.

Next, we took beautiful acrylic paints (I used a green metallic, bubble gum pink acrylic and Liquitex antique bronze) to soften over the edges of the squares and rectangles. We used a wet sponge to dilute the paints so that they remained translucent. You want to be careful not to obliterate the writing or the colors of the papers beneath. It's nicer when the bottom layer is subtly revealed. Using those three paints, I filled in the empty/blank spaces with a wash of color. You probably shouldn't paint over the other colors otherwise it can get a little "muddy" looking. I used the darker color about the edges of the folder to give more definition.

For the drawing, Lori told us to visually divide the page into quarters. In the top quarter of the page, you will draw the head and her bun. In the next quarter of the page, is her neck. The third quarter will be her torso and the bottom quarter of the page will be her skirt. Now, I don't draw or paint, so this was quite a challenge for me. To my delight and under Lori's fine tutelage, I managed to draw a female figure that was halfway recognizable!

Lori instructed us to draw the head in the shape of an egg. For a more graceful (not stiff) neck, make the lines of the neck at an angle instead of straight down. The arms and torso were a bit of a blur to me--just kinda eye-balled things and tried to keep them in proportion. Fortunately, when it came to drawing her hands, ingenious Lori had beautiful flowers in all different sizes to place between her wrists, so there was no need to draw her actual hands!

We drew her eyes, nose and lips before painting her skin with a watered down pale pink. Note: In the interest of time, I chose to draw her with her eyes closed. Su helped me put some lips on her. I painted her top a Tiffany Blue and her skirt a pretty purple. Her hair is copper. We went over her entire outline in charcoal pencil to make her really pop out of the page. I finished off the folder with a light dusting of glitter spray.

I am quite pleased with how my very first Kelly Rae Roberts girl turned out. Su pointed out that the word "sweetheart" appears right over her heart. I love those little unexpected surprises! Thank you Lori for giving me the support and encouragement to make her!