Home is Where the Heart Is

I am so delighted to be able to use the new Stencils and Chipboard products launched today which are being produced and sold exclusively by That’sCrafty.   

The stencils, called “Dinky Stencils” measure 12 x 7.5cm which makes them perfect for small projects such as cards and ATCs but also large projects where using  lots of different larger stencils can cause one stencil to smudge the previous one.  I rarely use more than a small area of each stencil so these are perfect for me.  They are so easy to line up as well so you can extend the size to any you want. I also love the way they have a hole punched in the corner so you can put them all on a ring to keep them tidy and handy.  The price also means I can get lots of different patterns for my money. 

I decided to make a panel featuring whimsy houses but instead of  using patterned paper to make the houses I would create my own with paint and stencils. 

I started with a piece of chipboard 26.5 x 21cm.  I love the way these have rounded corners.  

I gave my board a coat of gesso.

To create the background I dabbed spots of the Paper Artsy Fresco paint in   Mermaid, Waterfall and Antartic over my board and using my brayer smoothed the paint over

While this dried I put a base coat of the Paper Artsy Fresco paints in  Moonlight, Pumpkin Soup, Vanilla, Rose, China, Sage and Smurf onto paper, I used the backs of 6 x 6 patterned paper I no longer liked as this was the right thickness  

Using the Dinky Stencils I went over the painted papers with a palette knife with a mixture of paint, and DecoArt Modelling Paste or paint and DecoArt Texture Crackle about 1 part paint to 12 parts paste to create a range of patterned papers.  

I cut the patterned papers into an assortment of shapes to make houses, roofs, chimneys, windows and doors of the whimsical houses and applied them to my base with Gel Medium. 

I cut a number of circles from old text paper and stamped the heart from the Trust the Magic stamp set onto card 3 times with archival ink and fussy cut them out and stuck them to my board.

When the houses were dry I added shadows and highlights with Pan Pastels, Oil Pastels and Pitt Brush Pens, and doodling with the Fude Pen and White Sharpie.

I am also entering this into the Love to Create Challenge #14