A is for Art

This year I'm doing more than one Round Robin project and I've made a start on pages for the latest one, which is based on the alphabet and is called AlphabeticatheJourney, Alphabetica for short as far as the label is concerned. Once again we will only be mailing the pages, rather than the actual album and we already know our first partners but those pages do not need to be done till later on in February. We'll do two pages for each other each month, starting with C and D. We are using 8x8 7Gypsies 5ring album as for the TipTopJournals. I reckon we must be really boosting their sales with all these Round Robins!

We need to make the A and B for our own album as well as the covers and I've hickupping about it since before Christmas. The theme for my album, apart from the letters of the alphabet, is Art and Creativity, so every letter will hopefully illustrate a word to do with those concepts. I've left the colours up to each participant and I've gone multi-coloured for my own pages.

I've made several fabric/paper collages already, just for this project, and finally made one I was happy to use for my A page.

And naturally A is for Art in my book. Before making my collage on a background of calico (muslin in US talk) I stamped on the calico using all my Art word stamps and I found I had quite a selection. The large ART one is a free gift from ATCspecially and the rest come from a wide variety of sources. I used mainly Versacraft inkpads (previously Fabrico) which I heatset before adding the collage on top as this involves the use of wet, diluted PVA. Without heatsetting the stamping would run!

I cut out a piece of 8 x 8 from the collage, positioning the Art word in the top left corner. I layered it with white felt and a green cordoroy like fabric (from Cabbage Patch fabrics) on the bottom, right side facing upwards. The collage was machine stitched on top. I added the female image (from Alphastamps Cleo Tallulahs fabric collage sheet), once very large and then 2 much smaller versions of the same image. I also added a sparkling large letter A at top right and a postage stamp featuring a Picasso painting, stitched on. I beaded on the headband of Cleo and also added beads to her necklace on all the versions. I beaded around three edges of the collage and added a wonderful trim on the bottom. This also came from Alphastamps and it's simply to die for! I must make a mental note to get some more.

I'll show you B and my front cover once they're done!