I've designed a new theme for my site. It's still a work in progress...
These were my guidelines:
-KISS (keep it simple stupid). Simplicity was my main goal. I wanted a clean site that's easy to navigate.
-Non standard. This theme uses blocks in a non conventional way.
-Div css placement. I use css placement for all blocks instead of standard tables.
-CSS 2.1 This theme uses some advanced css features such as @font-face. This means it will render correctly in firefox, safari, opera, chrome but NOT IE 6. It WILL however degrade nicely to a standard font in IE. I'm going to release a new theme that really pushes the envelope regarding CSS.

NOTE: I've always been a keen reader of graphic design magazines. Until CSS 2.1 web designers have really been restricted by html as to what they can achieve and still maintain web functionality. A good example is XOOPS main menu. You can generate it dynamically but ONLY use standard web fonts (wait for my new theme ;) ) or you could design a slick menu then slice it up in fireworks and lose it's dynamic ability.
Now with 2.1 things like font transparency, rounded corners (directly in css) or shadows can all be achieved and still have menus and items dynamically generated. Of course we lose support on IE 6 but this is only an issue depending on your target audience. In my case IE 6 users is a very small percentage.
Let me know your initial impressions of my theme.

Fantastic!!!

Visually, I would make the blocks transparent, but leave the brush strokes as background.

This would make a more dramatic and artistic effect.

I am looking forward to the final result

And a tutorial about how to build a similar Website

+1 for the 'how to'