Today I’m hopping along with Denise Alloca, Sherry Canino, Karen Gaunt, Kristin Van Valkenburgh and Jessica Sporn to share our LOVE creations using Jessica Sporn Designs stamps & stencils and DecoArts products.

LOVE: of course that had to be the theme for today’s bloghop because it is almost Valentines Day. I understand in the USA it is common to give/send Valentines cards to all of your friends, but here in The Netherlands the focus lays on your partner and/or the one you have a (secret) crush on.

As you may know, when I refer to my partner I always use the word “beloved” so it’s obvious I love him very much, but we both are not the cliché roses-candles-fireplace romantic types (we are ‘romantic’ in our own weird way…) Creating a Valentines card was out of the question then… so what to do with “Love”??

I thought a bit more about the theme and reflected on ‘falling in love’ – and how I hated it to fall in love when I was young… well, ‘hate’ is too harsh a word, but I did not like the feeling either. I didn’t like how “some guy” could take over my logical working brain and be on my mind all the time, I despised how I acted silly and were not able to control my thoughts. There were happy and energetic moments too, I agree, but the overall feeling was “can we skip this part, just be together and go back to normal please.” I’m so glad my beloved and I love each other deeply without all that butterflies and pink bubbles….

And so I decided to create a face of a person who just fell in love and add the sentence “It’s just a silly phase I’m going through.” Yep, that’s a phrase from a song. Not the best song if you ask me, but it totally fits the feeling I want to express on the page.

Before I take you to my creating process let me tell you that you can find the giveaway at the end of this post… read on and you’ll get there 😉

First: preparations… I create different elements that I will combine on the page to collage a character/portrait. I start with creating a design that I want to use for the guy’s sweater.
I use DecoArt Fluid Acrylics Primary Yellow, that I smear on a blank piece of paper.

I like the design of the Dots and Dashes stencil

By mixing DecoArt Fluid Acrylics Primary Magenta with Titanium White I get a nice, pink color…

… resulting in this design.

I want a little texture on the background so I use Jessica’s Hebrew Calligraphy Hamsa Stencil and smear gesso through it (small, white photo.) When it’s dry, I spray some DecoArt Shimmer Mister Turquoise on the page and use a baby whipe to tone the colors down.

I want to add at least one heart to the page… to use as an eye. I search high and low in boxes and closets and I finally come up with this little chipboard heart BUT… it has two holes in it! (I remember a few years ago it was a trend to use all kinds of buttons and ‘button-like’ embellishments on your scrapbooking layouts… this piece must be a left over from that time.) However, it is the only heart shape I have so I go with it.

I paint the chipboard (Titanium White) and when it’s dry, I paint the heart again with DecoArt Antiquing Cream English Red Oxide. Do you know that stuff? You can give things an antique textured surface with it and create a distressed, aged effect.

There’s a tutorial video on how to use Antiquing cream (by Andy Skinner) here but in short: paint a background. When it’s dry, paint again with Antiquing Cream. Use a damp cloth to wipe off as little or as much ‘cream’ as you like. Seal it with a varnish.

My heart ends up looking like this.

Now it’s time to combine my elements… I cut a sweater from the earlier designed paper. I cut a head-shape from old left-over painted paper and position the ‘eye.’

Now it’s going fast…

• I don’t like how the heart looks on the face, so I paint it a bit more reddish. I also cover the holes with a ‘pupil’.
• I cut out a round shape to make for the other eye.
• A left over piece of monoprint goes as a nose.
• I paint the mouth with DecoArt fluid acrylics Cadmium Red Hue and
• for the hair I use a tiny little stamp from Jessica’s stamp series Build a Villa – Window Cube
• Finally, I add DecoArt Crackle Paste (mixed with a little yellow and red acrylics) on the cheeks and under the eye. The paste needs to dry on air (“do not try to force dry any of the crackle products with a heat tool, fan or blow dryer”) so I let this page dry overnight.

Next morning: I go back to my page and color the hair green to go with the nose.
I also outline the image with Fluid Acrylics Carbon Black for a bit more contrast.

Almost finished… all I have to do is handletter the phase I want to use on the page with a black marker and color the letters, using a small brush, with Fluid Acrylics Titanium White.

Now that was rather a long blogpost, I hope you liked to see and read about my creating process.

And now for the GIVEAWAY

One lucky commenter will win this Seven Hearts Stencil designed by Jessica Sporn. All comments on all the blog hop participants count – so make sure to visit everyone and leave some kind words. The list and links of the blog hop team members is at the end of this post.

And one commenter will win this little piece of art created by yours truly!

(11 x 21 cm – 4.3 x 8.3 inch)

It is a small sized mixed media face that is a bit similar to the one that I created in my art journal. Wanna win this “original Marit”?  Let me know the NUMBER of the artist/band name that sings the song the phrase on my art piece comes from. (Does this sounds cryptic to you? Then you probably have no idea who the artist is… )

So, go on then. Leave me a comment if you like to be in the draw for both giveaways and visit the other members and comment there to enlarge your chance to win the Seven Hearts stencil.

Marit Barentsen (you’re here)
Denise Alloca
Sherry Canino
Karen Gault
Kristin Van Valkenburgh
Jessica Sporn

The comments for these giveways closes Monday morning the 13th at 9 AM EST (for the Dutchies that’s 3 PM on Monday.) Jessica announces the winner on her blog on Valentines day, February 14th and I will post the name of the winner of my mixed media art piece on Wednesday, February 15th.

Once upon a time, there was a young man who lived near the sea.
He was a bit of a loner, and didn’t fit well in the community.
He had friends, oh yes, but he had a longing deep within him.
He didn’t even know what he longed for, but it had to do with the sea.
So much he knew.
He kept on coming back to the beach, staring over the waves…

Once upon a time, there was a mermaid.
Although she loved her family and life, deep hidden on the seabed,
she was somehow drawn to the water surface.
Was it out of curiosity?
She didn’t know what caused the feeling, but she kept coming back
to the surface to peek at the beach that laid in the distance.

In the Springtime, she saw people who walked their dogs.
Summer came, and children built sandcastles on the beach.
The wind played with the sand during Autumn storms and
in the winter, she stared at the dunes wondering what would lay behind it.

… and one day, she saw him.

The young man stood at the empty beach, and stared at the waves.
Her heart pounded when their eyes met, but before he realised what he saw
she dove under. . . so the young man, a sober guy, told himself he’d seen a fish.

That night he saw her eyes again in a dream and when he woke up,
he was convinced that he really had looked at a mermaid the other day.

The mermaid thought of the young man all day
and all night.
She couldn’t sleep.
She stayed below the surface for a month, two months, three months.
She still couldn’t sleep and when she did (only for a minute or so)
she dreamt of him.
She couldn’t eat and she wasn’t the happy mermaid she was before.
Her friends worried.
Her parents worried.
After four months, she told the whole story to her mum.
Her mum laughed but at the same time looked sad.
‘Dear daughter… I know what this is.
We thought you were ill, but it’s much worse.
You are deeply in love, this cannot be cured.
There ain’t no cure for love, you know.

Right that minute the mermaid knew what she had to do.
She kissed her parents goodbye, she waved at her friends and left.
She swam all the way to the surface and ventured to the beach.
It was an early Autumn morning and the beach was empty.
She combed the tangle out of her hair and waited….

She saw him coming over the dunes.
All that time, every day, he had come to the beach
looking for his mermaid.
And there she was.
He hold her in his arms and carried her home.
Gently, he laid her in the bathtub but her tail was already
started to shrink on the moment he’d kissed her.
The process took a few days and it was painful
but after that, the tail was transformed into a beautiful pair of legs.
He taught her to walk, and they walked along the beach together.

Only a year later, a little girl was born.
The girl had legs…

The mermaid and the man were over the moon happy.
‘I’m glad she doesn’t have a tail’ the man said ‘but when she grows up,
I want her to remember that her mum once was a mermaid.
I don’t want her to abnegate her origin when she gets older.
How can we do that?’

‘Let’s call her Marit’ the mermaid said.
‘It means ‘daughter of the sea’ and she will carry that name all her life.
That way she will never forget.’

The girl grew up to love the sea…

And she got a baby brother…

… he had no tail either.
He looked real human and so he was named after his dad,
to keep things in balance.

The man and the mermaid kept on loving each other…

… and they loved their children.
They were one happy family.

And the girl?
The girl never forgot where she came from.

How could she with a name like that.
‘Daughter of the sea’
Marit

And they all lived happily ever after.

This was the story about how I got my name.

The haiku is written for ‘Haiku my heart‘.
Click the link to visit the other participants and read more haiku’s.

Have a great weekend dear ones, and see you on Sunday.

(Yes, I’ll be back Sunday!)

* Don’t forget about the giveaway in my former post.
The winner will be announced on Tuesday!