Clown Gothic Arch

Last week I totally forgot all about the Gothic Arches challenge. No idea how it happened apart from the fact that the week before there had been no challenge and it had been a rather eventful week.

However despite a busy day I did manage to check the new theme today and it's Clowns, set by Nancy who is our overall hostess on Gothic Arches.

Some of you may remember that I made a whole set of works for Alphastamps using a Circus theme i.e. a large collage and also a set of ATC for a circus related swap on the Alphastamps Yahoo Group. I still had a bit left of the paper/fabric collage I created for those so immediately grapped it from the shelf and started work on the arch.

I added a fabric image from Alphastamps Clown Valentines sheet, which was stitched on with yellow zig-zag to blend her better into the background. I also lightly coloured the white areas with Tsukineko ink (orange-beige colour) as the white was a bit too glaring.

I added the elephant (from Alphastamps Elephants #2 collage sheet) and produced the text: Don't be a Clown! with my Dymo label maker and stitched around it. I added the transparencies (from Alphastamps Clowns # 6 sheet) turning one over so it faced the other way and stitched them on as shown. I added a clowns party hat in charm form (Artgirlz, available from Alphastamps), added a seed bead through the top of the hat and also around the clown.

Finally I layered the arch up with watercolour paper cut in the same shape and satin stitched around the edges apart from from the transparencies , as shown.