...But Only Hearts Can Build a Home

To be honest.... I tried to do some art journaling or mixed media painting during the last days but all I got was a lot of "stained paper" that went into the bin. But today I came up with a picture that I really like.

While browsing the net I stumbled upon the challenge over at Country View Challenges, where the theme is "Monochromatic"  and that inspired me to join in and focus on some of my favourites: earthtones. To be more precise: a lot of browns in all shades.

The DecoArt Americana palette offers a wide and lovely range of earth tones from "Light Buttermilk" to "Dark Chocolate". On my mixed media piece I used also "French Vanilla", "Antique White", "Yellow Ochre", "Cocoa", "Sable Brown", "Espresso" and "Charcoal Grey".

I started on a square piece of white heavy artists paper and applied droplets of all the colours all over it - from lightest to darkest -  and scraped it around using a scraper.  I did the same on a torn to size piece of brown kraft paper.

The technique for creating the background was mainly inspired by a lovely journal making workshop from wonderful Grace Howes from the "Soul Food" online class.

(I took some pictures of the various stages, but the artificial light at my craft desk made it all look yellow-sick-ish so I spare you the sight of this - I guess you can imagine well enough how acrylic paint looks like when being scraped from left to right, top to bottom and vice versa ;). So there are not step x step images this time. Sorry.

Anyway - this led to a wonderful inspiring background, on which I layered some torn pieces of the coloured brown kraft paper and also some strips of book pages.

I had those cut out kraft paper house shapes lying on my table (being left overs from one of the projects that went to the bin) and they were perfect for today's project :)

I used some of the left overs and tore some doors and windows to size, glued them on and drew the shapes using a black felt tip pen. To add more texture I stamped some numbers and script stamps on them. (I love especially the "fragments" quote stamp from Red Lead, but also the "Dictionary" and "Numbers" stamps from Kaisercraft work great when it comes to creating texture.

I also added two words using a Red Lead stencil and white decorating paste. The quote was stamped onto some white drawing paper, cut out and glued into place. Then I drew frames around the single word tiles.

I also went in with some "pumice stone" Distress ink and a trees stencil, but only lightly so the trees won't create too much structural "noise".

Some areas look rather busy anyway. ;)

I had a great time playing and messing around with colours, stencils, stamps, scissors and glue! I hope you love my "HOME" piece as much as I do :)

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you know that your comments are always very much appreciated (and are what keeps me going on my artful journey)! Thank you for taking the time and leaving me some nice words :)

Hugs and happy crafting!
Claudia xx