My Happy Place - Birch Ply Studio Plaque by Julie Ann

Hello Everyone! Today I have a question for you: where is your happy place? I have no hesitation in saying that I am often happiest in my studio, although country walks with my family could also take that prize. For years I longed for a 'room of (my) own' where I could paint, draw and generally create to my heart's content. I realized recently that I don't have a plaque for the door of my haven, so I decided to get to work on one of the large, notched rectangle Calico Birch Ply plaques to remedy this!

As you can see, my idyllic sea-shore landscape has again been influenced by Clarice Cliff's designs. I wanted to create a feeling of joy, the wonderful sense of escape and freedom that I experience in my sunny room where I can hear the birds singing and the occasional bark of a dog or children playing in our quiet street below.

The Birch Ply is a lovely surface to work on, but I gave it a thin layer of Gesso before blobbing on some acrylic crafting paint...

and spreading it over my substrate with an old store card.

I repeated this process and had lots of fun building up layers until my background  looked like this...

Here I am sketching in pencil and then blocking in with colour.

Outlining with a fine brush and black acrylic ink gave some definition to my design, and then it was time to add the Calico finishing touches to bring it to life.

I wanted to make the words dance because, even though creating doesn't always go smoothly, whenever I enter that room and close the door behind me my heart does a dance all its own. I decorated them by simply applying watermark ink to the letters, dipping them into a mix of white and gold embossing powders and then holding them in my tweezers and giving a quick blast of the heat gun.

Thank you so much for stopping by today. I hope that you will find some time to spend in your own 'happy place' in the coming weeks.

Calico Craft Parts used in this Project
Notched Rectangle Birch Ply Plaque
Sheet of MDF Mini Wood Garden Birds 
Sheet of MDF Mini Hares