WOYWW #328: Lights will guide you home

Hello to you on this rainy/windy Wednesday morning! At least in my part of the world autumn has arrived well and truly. The perfect excuse to visit the Stamping Ground to nose around other crafty desks!

The photo of my desk was taken yesterday mid-day as I was working on a project, which since then I have actually finished, so I can show it to you as well, if you scroll further down the page.

On my desk you can find the following items:

• My Wimsy Garden mini canvas, which you can see more of here.
• Some Amsterdam acrylics, which I'd bought back in the summer, but haven't had a chance to use much until now. They have a great colour range - much bigger than Liquitex Basics.
• A copy of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'urbervilles, which is one of my favourite books, but here I'm using it for collaging. I have it on my Kindle if I want to read it again!
• Some painted and stencilled tissue papers for my new project, which features a lighthouse, a sketch of which you can also spot on my desk.

Last night I managed to finish my lighthouse project, which started out as this week's LifeBook lesson, but somewhere along the road I diverged and ended up with something completely different! Oh well, I'd better go back to the drawing board for the LifeBook lesson and follow the instructions a bit more closely. The only thing I kept was using painted tissue papers and the fact that the project was inspired by poetry, in my case the lyrics to Coldplay's song 'Fix You'. The similarities pretty much end there!

This is probably not my best piece artistically - well, who am I kidding, I know it isn't - but it means a lot to me.  These past few months we went through a rough patch as a family - with my husband's mum passing earlier in the summer and the palaver with our new house, which we are now selling, never having moved in properly. 

I titled this canvas 'Lights will guide you home' which I borrowed from the Coldplay song. The three little fish represent us as a family (me, hubby and our son - in reverse priority order!) in the sea of life, the lighthouse being our home guiding us back to safety. 

I covered a 12" X 9" canvas with book paper and then used the painted tissue papers for the background, which allowed the print to show through. I collaged the pieces of the lighthouse with tissue paper as well, using white acrylic paint as glue, because I wanted the orange colour to pop, rather than be transparent. Finally, I added the strips of text and some metal charms. The entire project didn't take longer than an hour to make, not counting drying time. Here are some photos:

Thanks for visiting today! I'll leave you with this great Coldplay tune: