Caryl's Album and a very artful day

First of all the partners were announced today for the 4x4 Mingle on the MailartbyDesign Yahoo group so I can now show you the piece I made for this. It has been finished for a while and was this month on the theme of Oriental Express. This will be going in the mail to Jan W asap. I made the fabric/paper collage for this 4 x 4 specially red so I can also use it for more of the Circle Swap pages but these have not been made yet. The image was given to me in a gift package when I was hosting a swap, and the transparency is from Artchix. The lanterns are from a napkin used in the collage.

I have also been working over the past few days on Caryl's album in our Round Robin journal exchange. Caryls' album is dedicated to the colours Green and Purple but the theme was left up to us. I decided to go with Love conquers everything and I therefore used pages from Wuthering Heights (vintage paper pack from LostArtCreations) in the fabric/paper collage I made for this album. I added music sheets, romantic vintage picture and other bits and pieces as well as flowery napkins with green and purple flower and garden themes. On the first page (see above) I added the vellum gentleman (also from LostArtCreations) who is looking longingly at the facing page where his love is coming towards him, accompanied by a chaperone, of course!I mounted the collage on both the pages on a piece of wool tartan like fabric. It's not an actual clan tartan but more like a novelty one which I bought more than 15 years ago during a visit to Inverary. I treat it a bit like a treasure and am only using it in small increments as I'm not sure I'll ever be able to get it again. But it went so well with Caryl's colour scheme and my collage that I simply felt it had to be the background. I further added buttons and beads to both pages as well as a Love charm which I coloured purple using an Adirondack dabber.

Caryl also wanted us to make a signing-in tag for her album and I really liked what I came up with using the last remnants of the collage. Needless to say the picture is of me (as requested by Caryl) but quite a few years have gone by since this picture was taken. I think I was about 17 at the time!! Finally I also found time to finish the Green ATCs for a swap on the ATcards website which had been waiting for their finishing touches for quite some time. The background was also used for some pages in the Circle Swap. They look more yellow than green on the scan but they are in reality that lime green I mentioned on an earlier blog and which delights me so. The insect transparencies are from an Artchix sheet. As I had not made any ATCs for my 100 ATC project for quite some time (when I'm finishing a large quilt I really seem to drop everything else!), I used the same background for ATC no. 66 which received the title Pond Life. Here it is: