Where the heart is...

Hello all!  Hope you're all having a good weekend, with plenty of crafting, or time for whatever else it is you enjoy doing...

Today, I'm delighted to be offering Guest Design project for the April Stamping Sensations challenge Special Occasions (other than birthdays).  I was lucky enough to win there recently, and - along with some fabulous sticky candy - this is my reward.

Because it's uppermost in my mind as a theme (what with ongoing house sales as well as dollshouse renovations), I ended up with Moving House/New Home as my special occasion, and this is the corrugated hanging which arrived on my craft mat...

Once again, I ripped up a cardboard box to get my substrate (I think this one was from my mother's new log basket!), and tore off some of one paper layer to get at the fabulous texture underneath.  This time, though, I did leave quite a solid "canvas" of smooth surface in the centre, so that I could paint and stamp on it.  It's about 12.5 x 8 inches in size.




I had great fun creating the background with Distress Paints - they do blend really deliciously with a spritz or two of water - over an initial coat of gesso.

Of course I made sure to leave lots of corrugated card still showing round the edges for a good shabby chic look.







I've got limited DP colours at the moment, but I've started out with my favourite blues and browns - as well, of course, as the vital Picket Fence - so they work well for sky and ground!

I added some stamping with Tim Holtz texture stamps from the Ultimate Grunge set - bubbly dots to the sky, gridwork to the ground.












I also had a lovely time playing with lots of inks, sprays and my embossing folders to create my little houses.

There's even some stamping on some of them...

Since we were on blues and browns I stuck with those colours, inking up cardstock with Distress Inks before running it through the BigShot with various embossing folders.

I inked again to highlight the emboss, and then I did lots of spritzing with Perfect Pearls Mists to get a metallic patina on the surface.


You can see the sheen in some of the photos, but the day was pretty overcast sadly - if we ever get any sunshine ever again, I might update with a nice sparkly, sunny photograph!


The houses are cut, of course, with Tim Holtz's Artful Dwellings die.  And I hand cut the doors with some of the leftovers.  The tiny door handles are, of course, Idea-ology fasteners - they turned out to be just the right size!


At this point, everything sat there for a few days while I tried to work out what else was needed.



I knew I wanted some shabby chic lettering: New Home seemed appropriate... so I cut some more
of the corrugated card with the WordPlay die, and then gave the letters a good layer of Picket Fence Crackle Paint.

Once they were good and dry, I added some inky definition to the cracks.










Then I started toying with embellishments and some Tattered Flower die-cuts and gradually all the extras took their places.

I used alcohol inks to re-colour some of the metal gears, so that they'd fit in with the palette of the piece.

And I added some of the lovely little wooden cogs I got a while back on ebay.














The flowers are layered wax paper and tissue wrap (you've seen similar ones here - those were the leftovers from this, but they ended up posted in a different order!) with some more fasteners at the centre.

I added some Creative Expressions skeleton leaves, moulding them slightly for extra dimension.

There was still something missing, and that's when I reached for possibly my favourite stamp set, the Silhouette Blossoms by Stampology.  I added some "trees" - thorny but beautiful - between each of the houses... love these stamps!

The final touch was to make sure that Home really is where the Heart is...

I used the alcohol inks again (Gold and Hazelnut mainly) to alter one of my silver heart charms.













I bought quite a few of these for a song on ebay, so they're ripe for altering to match anything else that's going on.

A bit of hole-punching, some Distress Stained twine to hang the whole thing up by, and we're done.

I had such fun creating this... I had a lot of notice of the challenge theme from the lovely Brenda, so I was able to let it all bubble along nice and slowly - returning to play about with it whenever I had a spare few minutes, and overall I'm very happy with how it has turned out.

I hope you'll pop over to have a look at the fabulous inspiration from Brenda and the rest of the Design Team at Stamping Sensations, and perhaps play along.  You'll find all the challenge details here.

For now, I'll wish you all a great week to come and, if we're lucky, Spring may finally arrive!




May your home always be too small to hold all of your friends.
Anonymous

Home is the nicest word there is.
Laura Ingalls Wilder

He is the happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I'd like to enter this in the following:
At Try It On Tuesday they are playing a Recycling theme - I'm back on the cardboard boxes!
Tando Creative Challenges are looking for New Beginnings this month
At the Stampotique Designers Challenge they are looking for Flowers, stamped or 3D - how about a bit of both?!
At Unruly Paper Arts, Reader Art Quest 2 is for Gears
Ah, go on then... one more for the Very Strict Challenge at Simon Says Stamp and Show