"A House is Made of Walls and Beams...

....a Home is built with Love and Dreams."


Isn't that a lovely quote?
Hello and servus! There's not much going on over here on my blog - due to the heat wave that has hit Vienna last week and while it stayed on let evaporate most of my brain I'm afraid. ;)

Heat and mojo obviously don't go together too well - and a flare of arthrosis (or whatever it is that makes almost all of my joints - especially my fingers' joints - ache and do strange things....I will hopefully know more in about a week or so) doesn't help with this at all. But hey - it could be worse and here I am, trying to enjoy the good things and find my way around the things that might take me down if I waste too much time fighting them. (well....it took me ages and a lot of tears to get to that point honestly...just in case you think these are very wisely spoken words. lol)

So there's nothing new from my studio desk that I could share with you, but I found that I still had images of a project I did for DecoArt for CHA this winter and by now I am allowed to share it with you on my blog - so here it is:

It's an art journal page I did with DecoArt media fluid acrylics, white Crackle Paint, black and white Gesso and Misters.

I started out by applying tiny dots of various fluid acrylics tones directly from the bottles to a sheet of heavy white card (from an old notebook) and then scraping the paints on with an old credit card.

The secret with a satisfying result with this technique is to stop scraping and spreading the paints at the right point (otherwise they start to mix too much and become a mess).

But if you find you overdid your page you can still go in with some additional dots of paint and white (Gesso) after all has dried. You can repeat this step as long as you want or need to. But make sure you finish with the white Gesso.

Spread the Gesso the same way as you did with the paints. This will help brighten and blend in your scraped on paints and also add more depth.

Next I stamped on some small text, numbers and grunge circles in random places, using black archival ink. You can use any texture and text and numbers stamps you like. I used Kaisercraft, Andy Skinner and Red Lead stamps for this step. I also added a bit of doodling with a white Sharpie.

Then I cut out random circles of different sizes. I saw to it that they weren't perfect circles.

I then prepared my journal page by collaging on some torn pieces of old book pages with matte DecoArt Decou-page and stamping on some chicken wire texture in random spots.

After that I sprayed and sprinkled on some of the wonderfully vibrant DecoArt media Mister tones that either matched or contrasted the circles' colours. 

I glued some of the cut out circles to the page and drew an outline with a watersoluble black pencil. I spread the pigment of the drawn lines with a soft water loaded brush.

That creates this kind of "shading" around the circles but still leaves visible lines. I love that effect! On some of the circles I did some doodling with a white Sharpie.


While the page was set aside to dry I stamped the quote and some of the lovely houses from my Darkroom Door "Home Sweet Home" stamp set onto some white card, painted the houses with lightly diluted DecoArt media fluid acrylic paints and cut them out.

I glued them to some of the circles to make them look as if there were a lot of differently sized "floating" worlds or planets with little houses on them. (we all live in our own little worlds or universes somehow, don't we?)

The quote is from the same stamp set and was added the same way as the cut out circles.

To add some more texture I stencilled on the words "Create", "Inspire" and "Dream" using DecoArt media white Crackle Paint, a palette knife and a Red Lead stencil.

For a finishing touch and to fuse all the elements on the page I scraped on some white and black DecoArt media Gesso with a small palette knife, making sure that I also covered part of the circles.

Don't be afraid of loosing lovely detail by covering it up! I promise the more randomly you apply Gesso and paints to your pages and other creations, the more lively and interesting they become!

Our subconscious gets attracted by those spots where things are "in disorder", by everything that is NOT neatly done and NOT symmetrically or otherwise systematically arranged. But of course there has to be some visible order so the disorder becomes visible as a contrast. And contrasts (not only in colour but also in broken "rules" of composition for example) are what attracts our eyes and subconscious and what makes art interesting and "adventurous" and therefore appealing to us.

I hope you liked my journal page (and art theory lesson)! Thanks for stopping by!

Hugs and happy crafting, 

Claudia xxx