Darcy Wilkinson #4 House Of Books Part 1....

"Here is my final project for this month. I will be showing you half today and half tomorrow.
I originally planned to go with a blue/cream vintage look. I started to paint the blue and then
changed my mind... typical huh! Why don't the brainstorms come 'before' you start painting". 

So I had to gesso the whole house before I could begin again.
I then painted on Hey Pesto..Smoked Paprika..London Bus..Zesty Zing & Limelight.
I made sure to use the Hey Pesto on all the inside joins and outside edges.

Next I added a layer of Crackle Glaze and then a layer of Snowflake. Once the crackling was dry I sanded some away to reveal the original colours a bit more.

Now to decorate the sides. I coloured some grunge paste with Pumpkin Soup and Smoked Paprika, then pushed it through a Crafters Workshop flower stencil. I created a group of sunflowers. I added a little depth to them with some mixed browns. Finally adding a little Treasure Gold in White Fire just to add a little sheen to the flower heads.

I drew the leaves and stems in place and coloured those with Aquamarkers.
Next I used Mini 48 to create a fence and painted it with Cinnamon, Brown Shed and French Roast. I blended some Hey Pesto and Limelight on a small piece of card and stamped on the grass from JOFY10.

On the other side, I started out the same by making the sunflowers, fence and grass.
Then I made a bird house. I stamped Squiggly Ink Mini 26 onto card, cut it out and used the hole left behind as a stencil. 

I pushed grunge paste into the stencil and lightly stamped it with the criss cross border stamp from JOFY10. Once dry I painted it with Cinnamon, Brown Shed, French Roast and Haystack.

I blended some Beach Hut, Mermaid and Guacamole onto card and stamped the birds from Squiggly Ink Mini 26. I cut these out and added them to the birdhouse and fence. I decided they needed to be shiny so added glossy accents to each bird.

Now for the roof.

I took some pieces of corrugated card, ripped not cut. I painted them with Brown Shed, London Bus, Smoked Paprika. Once dry I lightly dry brushed them with Stone.

Before glueing the panels on I added a 'chimney'. I curled some heavy wire using pliers. I then cut 2 hearts, painted them with Beach Hut and Mermaid. I added dots with London Bus. Once dry I added glossy accents to each heart. Then I glued them back to back, trapping the end of the curled wire between the hearts. Then I trapped the other end of the wired under the roof panels.

Now to make some wallpaper.
I took 4 sheets of A3 cartridge paper, no particular brand, and I created some painted patterned paper. Often people are scared by such a large white space. The best way to get past this is to scribble words onto the paper.
So..
Step 1: scribble words, you could use any. I scribbled the names of all the fresco paints.
Step 2: Randomly spray some inks, any that you have.
Step 3: Stencilling. I used 3 stencils. I wouldn't go too crazy, better to repeat 3 stencils than to use 7 or 8 different ones. I used several Fresco Paints for the stencilling.
Step 4: Stamping. I used HPXT01 and HP1008.

Step 5: I used a scraper/old credit card to scrape Snowflake randomly and in a thin layer over parts of the page.

Step 6: More stamping. Mini 23 and 72 

Step 7: I then added doodling around some of the stencilled shapes. I just used a regular black Bic ballpoint pen, no need for fancy journalling pens here. I also used a spray can lid dipped in fresco paint to add circles.

Here are some close ups, I just love this crazy paper.

If you want some more inspiration on doodling and creating papers then check out the Doodle Queen Traci BautistaI used 2 of the sheets as wallpaper inside the house. I left 2 of the boxes unpapered, and just painted them with Hey Pesto.

In the 2 green spaces I wanted to add some drawers. I measured each space, and decided to make 2 for the upper space and 3 for the lower space. I 'wallpapered' the inside of the drawers, and the front panel. I also added white heart brads as handles.

Here is the house complete with its drawers.

That's it for today. I will be back tomorrow to show you how I used all those spaces and drawers. I have a cool door and some funky books to show you

Leandra Says: Basically, I just want you to come and wallpaper MY house with that stuff! Which room shall we do first?? Downstairs loo could do with a bit of that!!! It's superb Darcy!

Gillian Says: Love the funky doodled paper, so many designs to look at on the background, but they all work perfectly together. Another awesome project Darcy.

No doubt Darcy has not only blown you away yet again If there are some ideas within this that you might like to try; making wallpaper, a heart on a squiggled wire, drawers for a niche...then please feel free to join in and share with us all your creativity here, just link up from any web page. We'd love to see what you've been up to as a result!