This Must Be the Place!

I'm happy to share my art journal pages today over at Nathalie Kalbach's blog HERE for the Creative Squad. You'll learn how I made not one, not two, but three pages celebrating one of my favorite places - home on the deck!

And here's my January project in case you missed it!

My Home is My Castle

When I started thinking about this month’s theme, “My Home is my Castle”, I started to imagine a castle behind my own little house. There are so many sayings that relate to this idea, like Queen of the castle (me, I guess), or a man’s home is his castle (hubby), that I knew where I wanted to head with this. In real life, I am glad I don’t live in a huge, drafty castle that I would have to clean, as housework is a much lower priority than creative work. 

I headed to my big Dylusions art journal, and squirted on some yellow and turquoise paint and blended it together with a brush. While the paint was still wet, I closed the book and pressed the pages together. Open them up immediately and let dry to create a nice texture.

Next, I used dark blue paint with a brayer on the Art Foamies large Santa Fe stamp and stamped a repeating pattern across the pages to create the main part of the castle. Then, I used the small Santa Fe stamp to make the upper part of the castle. Once that dried, I went over the castle with Quinacridone Gold.

I wanted to add a bit of a dreamy quality to my castle, so added a layer of Interference Gold. I like how this brought out more of my paint texture too. I also added bright green with the Toledo stencil around the edges of my pages.

I outlined the castle with a graphite pencil and went over it with a water brush, and added in some window slits and an entrance. Using bright pink paint with the Wired stencil, I added pops of color for contrast, and also stenciled some color pops onto a sheet of green card stock for later use.

Here’s a closeup of the colors and textures on the page.

I chose Nathalie’s Art Deco home for my pages, so I could used bright colors on it. I was thinking of those wonderful turquoise and pink homes in Florida (maybe because it is so darn cold here). I stamped it onto watercolor paper, added color with watercolors and markers, then fussy cut it out. I cut out a few funky trees with the paper I’d previously stenciled, and distressed them a bit with black ink.

Of course, I had to add a flag flying from one of the turrets of the castle. I painted it in yellow and went around it with a black pen.

Behind each of our homes, whether an apartment or house, is the castle of our imagination. I hope you’ve been inspired by my art journal pages to create your own awesome project!