Lenna's 4 x 4 and Lenna's giveaway

Every month I swap a small mixed media art piece (4 x 4") with a fellow artist within the OhMyGothic Yahoo group. Our name refers back to the fact that we started by swapping Gothic Arches but this year it is the 4 x 4 pieces. This month was an easy one for me since the piece I made was for my friend Lenna and as by now I know her really well, I also know what she likes. Her theme for the 4 x 4s was Quotations and as you can see I used a quotation about love since both Lenna and I are inveterate romantics.

I started with a white cotton fabric that was painted, stencilled, sprayed, splodged and stamped and then layered up with wadding (batting in US), and machine stitched. I stamped the quotation onto calico (US muslin), layered gold netting underneath and a transparent flower ribbon on top and stitched it down as shown. A romantic pair was added (from Enchanted Mercantile) as well as a heart. I layered the piece with 4 x 4 watercolour paper, followed by a leaf fabric (a gift from Lenna herself!), which you can just see peeking out from behind, and stitched around the piece followed by beading with size 11 seed beads.

The quotation reads: Love. The Soul of Life. A reason for Happiness. And the shortest distance between Hearts (Hero Arts).

As some of you know I love swapping with Lenna and she has her very own swap site which you can find here, and there is also a button in the sidebar! She posted her 1000th post there and is celebrating by giving everyone a chance to win one of her glorious ATCs or a package of collage items from her own stash. So give yourself a chance and follow the instructions on her site there to be in with a chance. I shouldn't really be telling you this as I would LOVE to win something myself. Fingers crossed!