The Happy Homestead canvas

Hi everyone. It's Bonnie here today with a mixed media canvas to share. I just recently got this fabulous Susan K. Weckesser stamp, The Happy Homestead, in my happy mail from eP. I am such a fan of her images and you know I love houses so this was a must have. I decided to paper piece the house and then add shading with Prismacolor pencils. The papers come from Fancy Pant's Park Bench 6 x 6 pad. I stamped the house multiple times using Archival Jet Black ink, fussy cut the bits, and then adhered them to a fully stamped house on white cardstock. The roof and fence were stamped again on white, cut out, and popped up on foam tape for dimension. A small black pearl became the doorknob.

 The background started with four colours of blue and 3 colours of green watercolour crayons scribbled randomly on the canvas. Then I tried an idea I learned from Terri Kahrs in her 21 Secrets class: instead of spreading the watercolour crayon with water, use white gesso. Lovely, lovely...and beautifully blended. That technique is a keeper. Once dry, the colours were intensified with Gelatos (Snow Cone, Cotton Candy, Boysenberry, Green Tea, and Spearmint) and spread with a damp finger. The darker colours were added once again to the edges, smudging with a dry finger this time. Pthalo Blue Big brush pen was used around the edge of the canvas, once again smudging it with my finger while the ink was still wet. (Yes, my fingers get very inky!)

Memento Teal Zeal ink was used on Untity's Cooped Up Notes stamp to create a little background texture. Memento Nautical Blue was sponged through the Dylusions Alphabet Border Small stencil and also on the word Family stamp which comes with the house stamp. White gesso was pounced through the TCW Star Fall stencil as well as the TCW Mini Punchinella stencil. It was also used over some mesh from an onion bag and used to load up the TH splatter stamp. More Teal Zeal was added via the TH sketchy heart stamp.

At this point, the house was adhered to the canvas and shaded around with the Pthalo Blue BB pen. Stepping stones were handcut from another designer paper from the same Park Bench stack edged with Black Big Brush pen. A few phrases were added to the mix from Idea-ology's Remnant Rubs as well as three pieces of washi tape. A little flower garden was added with mulberry flowers and gems.

The sun was die cut from yet another paper from the same collection and mounted on black. The center was popped up on foam dots and doodled around to add a more sketchy feel. Black gesso was watered down slightly to add bottle top rings and gift card lines. White gesso rings were also added in a smaller size.

Deep blue calligraphy ink was splattered onto the background for contrast and to amuse me :) Finally the word Love was added with Thickers. Gems and doodling were added to grunge the letters up and help them blend into the canvas a little better.

Well, that's it for this one. I had a good old messy play, tried something new, and am completely smitten with this wonky house. Thanks for joining me today. I hope you get some messy play time soon.

Bonnie

The thumbnails below link to some of the products I used which can be found in the eclectic Paperie shop:

Unity Stamp Co. - Happy Homestead (Susan Weckesser)	Claudine Hellmuth Studio Gesso	Claudine Hellmuth Studio - Black Gesso	Faber Castell - Gelatos - Blue Colors
Faber Castell - Gelatos - 50′s Diner	Faber Castell - Gelatos - Green Colors	Faber Castell - Big Brush Pens - Blue	Faber Castell - Big Brush Pen - Black
Unity Stamp Co. - Cooped Up Notes	Dylusions Stencil 5x8" - Alphabet Border	TCW - 6x6 Star Fall Stencil	Idea-ology - Tim Holtz - Remnant Rubs - Words