The House Protects The Dreamer....

Greetings.  This month the contributing artists of the Sketchbook Challenge decided to do a blog hop using the September theme, "Houses and Hideaways".  The meaning of home in a personal and larger scale is very important to me and frequently makes appearances in my work, either literally or in an abstracted way.
I'm always reminded of a favorite quote from the movie, "Under The Tuscan Sun".  It occurs at the very end of the movie:
 "What are four walls, anyway?  They are what they contain.  The house protects the dreamer.  Unthinkably good things can happen, even late in the game.  It's such a surprise".

The house protects the dreamer.  Oh, how I love this.

With that in mind, I decided to create a whimsical version of my house.

I used two pieces of 140lb hot press watercolor paper.

The left piece will become the background.

The right piece was cut into the shape of a house and covered with 

a variety of washi tape from my (ahem) rather large collection.

I would like to mention that this idea was inspired by a recent blog post for 

Stencil Girl contributing artist Carolyn Dube.

Using two types of paint I covered the background paper.

I used a portion of the "Rafters"  stencil by Mary Beth Shaw from the Stencil Girl line to

create the windows and doors of my little house.

I took several die-cut shapes of Grungeboard and painted them white.

Then, I painted each element individually.

I used Mary Beth Shaw's "Gears" stencil and overlaid it onto the background paper.

I partially-concealed that image with more paint.  The stencil seemed perfect as a 

metaphor for time passing, sort of like the mechanism inside a watch.

Using an old stamp I printed into both the "door" and "window" shapes on the house.

I blotted a bit of contrasting paint on the edge of the house 

(and on the background paper) as I plan to glue the bird over both.

The palm tree and the "104" are significant because they are elements of my current home.

In addition, prior to glueing the house to the background I used a leaf stamp on both edges of the background paper.  Birds, the garden, color, and a bit of dreaming:  these are very important 

components of my house, my home.

The house truly does protect the dreamer.

If you haven't done so already I hope you will stop over to the Sketchbook Challenge blog for my companion post on this subject.  Thanks for stopping by!  Please leave a comment to be eligible for a drawing!  Cutoff for the drawing will be 5:00 pm CDT on September 20th.