This piece came together as a bit of a love letter to the Australian landscape, built almost entirely with the 13@rts Down Under paper pack and its matching product range — including the gorgeous Australia stencil that ended up becoming the heart of the composition.
Setting the Foundation
I started by staining my wooden canvas around the border with Tiger Eye Colour Glow mixed with water, letting that warm, earthy tone soak into the wood before anything else went down. While that was drying, I cut my papers to size, distressing the edges for a bit of age and texture, then sealed everything down with the 13@rts multi-purpose medium — it really does double duty as both glue and sealer, which makes life easier.
For my fussy cutting, I've picked up a trick that's become a total game changer: working on a glass Imat. The blade glides so much more smoothly and doesn't catch the way it can on other surfaces.
Building the Texture
To add depth to the background, I used a dry paintbrush to pick up powder from several of my Colour Glows — Carnelian, Labradorite, Fire Opal and Golden Calcite among them — and sprinkled it across the canvas, then misted it with water so the colours could bleed and blend into one another. Once I was happy with the base blend, I went back in with the brush to build up the intensity in places where I wanted more punch.
Finding the Landscape
This is where the piece really started to take shape. I wanted a sense of landform, so I sliced up a styrofoam ball and used my heat gun to soften the edges — just enough to lose that too-perfect craft-store look. Sand paste filled in the gaps around these pieces and helped tie them into the surface, and I mixed dry pigments into acrylic with liquid medium in browns, reds and greens to bring that landscape palette through.
Composition and Detail
Once the base was working, I turned my attention to composition — finding a stick that felt right for the piece and running it across the canvas to naturally split the scene into two levels. From there I figured out where the stencilling and fussy-cut elements should sit. For the stencilling, I mixed up a stencil paste using the 13@rts multi-purpose medium and Olivin Colour Glow, then worked it through the Australia stencil to bring in the leaf details once I'd settled on the layout.
All the animal imagery — the kangaroo, the koalas, the crocodile — came from the fussy cutting sheet included in the 13@rts Down Under paper pack, so it all sat together beautifully once it was in place. With the branch dividing the piece, I had two little worlds to fill. Up top, the kangaroo and the pair of koalas found their spot among the eucalyptus leaves, and below, the crocodile settled into the warmer, more textured ground. I tucked in some vintage-style touches too — an Air Mail tag and an old Australian postage stamp — to give the whole thing a slightly nostalgic, travelled feel.
To soften the joins between all these elements, I brought in a mix of natural and textural extras: muslin, gold wire mesh string, paper bark, and some brown packing material for added texture. And because I wanted the piece to feel genuinely tied to country, I finished with a scattering of dried gum nuts along the branches.
The Result
What started as a stained wooden canvas became a layered, textural landscape — built up slowly through staining, stencilling, fussy cutting and a whole lot of natural elements that gave it that unmistakable Australian feel. Two little scenes, one above and one below, each with their own character, but tied together by that branch running straight through the middle.
