Home Sweet Home

A couple of weeks ago on Create and Craft TV I watched a programme about Stampbord, which I'd never heard of before.  The demonstrator made a lovely night scene as though looking through a window.  Just by layering inks and stamping and creating texture, she produced a really lovely piece of art.  It took a lot of willpower not to buy up every piece of Stampbord on the show (those people really know what they're doing!).  I really wanted to have a go, and then I remembered that I had quite a bit of greyboard left over from a previous impulse buy.

Now, I'm a creative person, but I wouldn't call myself artistic.  As I've found since starting cardmaking, composition is a real skill.  So it was with some hesitation that I cut the board down to size and prepared to get started on my first mixed media masterpiece.

I used three pieces about 9 x 6.5cm (roughly 3.5 x 2.5in).  I covered them in patterned paper  and then painted the backs with white gesso.  I also applied a  thin layer of gesso over the top of the papers to mute the colours a little.  I then stamped and embossed the word "HOME" in purple on two pieces, then wrote  "Sweet" with a Versamarker (my new favourite thing!) and embossed that in blue.  I stamped then embossed a couple of bird silhouettes on the HOME panels,  On all three panels I used a flower and foliage stamp with silver ink, then over-stamped the flowers in a different colour.  I didn't like the way that it looked so I painted over the silver ink with Moss Green Luminarte Silk Acrylic Glaze.  Then I attached a few flowers made from air-drying clay and ran purple organza ribbon along the back to hold the three panels together and make a hanging loop.

It's quite pretty and I like the way it turned out, but it is very basic.  Having seen a few mixed media tutorials since making my wall hanging, I see that I could have gone much further with creating the backgrounds and layering, but then that's what learning is all about.  I've still got a lot of greyboard left, and I'm already thinking about my next project...