Home is where the heart is

The diva challenge this week is titled 'Home'. The Diva did a tile based on where she lives in Canada and a few of the other submissions I saw portrayed elements of their gardens. I have a brown thumb so my garden isn't very inspirational. The only thing I can grow are perennials that somehow survive on their own and come up year after year. (You may remember my peonies late in May.) So I thought and I thought about what home means to me. As I was looking through some photos from a recent family wedding I knew what I wanted to do.

Home is my family. - wherever that family may be. Our family has grown in the last few years with three granddaughters all under the age of 4. When we were last all together, the girls were very active, crawling or running all around. There was lots of action, ribbons in their hair, and lots of pink.

I used a tangle pattern (that is on my blog in the tangle pattern gallery) called 'Tootsie'. Tootsie is something I drew in my school notebooks many years ago - and I know a lot of others were drawing it too. I didn't invent it - I just named it and threw it out there for everyone to use. Tootsie became my string for this tile.

This tile began with a colored background I did with my Tombow markers and a watercolor technique. A white gelly roll pen, colored pencil shading and chalk pencil highlights complete it.