Gothic Arches for Caryl

By coincidence, Caryl and I are also paired up for the monthly Gothic Arches exchange in the OhMyGothic Yahoo Group. Caryl had no theme so I just went with images that sort of grapped my attention as I was leafing through my collage sheet collection, and this is what I came up with.

The first arch, called She was loved! is made on a background of brown velvet which I machine quilted with one of the decorative stitches on my machine. I added a lovely picture of the Madonna, not because I'm in the least bit religious (I'm not!) but because I love the painting this came from. The image is a fabrik paper one from Bmuse. This was stitched on with gold thread. I added a lovely vintage blue trim and a vintage blue velvet flower (both from LostArtCreations). The star charm at the top is also from LAC. I then mounted the whole arch onto watercolour paper and stitched everything together with a zigzag stitch and turquoise tread. I added gold beads around the edges. I realized when the arch was finished that the colour combination is brown and blue which is also the next one for the Colour Groupies ATC exchange next month. I've made these ATCs already (pictures at a later stage!) and that must have influenced this arch subconsciously.

For the next arch I came across a rather severe looking woman on one of my Paperwhimsy fabric sheets. She looked so serious that I just had to have some fun with her. I added the top hat and the shoes which both come from a Paperwhimsy transparency and found the text La Valse excentrique ( which translated means The eccentric waltz). It came from a paper text sheet from European Papers. I'm sure she is definitely not amused by her arch but I hope Caryl will be! This arch was finished like the one above and I also added a Swarowski crystal at her neck (from Austria like the waltz) and a flower on her head. That bit of orange was just what the arch needed to make it look complete.