Sepia and White pages for Debby's Album

These pages have been in the pipeline for quite some time. I started collecting white and sepia items as soon as I knew Debby had chosed this as her theme colours for her album in our TipTopJournals Round Robin. Working without colour is really hard for me so I knew I had to pay special attention!

She also loves all things vintage so I used some of my collection of vintage images to illustrate the story I've tried to tell with these pages.

On page 1 is an actual cabinet card which I found in a yummy 2nd hand bookshop locally. I made holes into the 4 corners using my Crop-a-Dile and used brads from Artchix to attach it to the background, which is a pre-quilted white fabric I received from Peggy, another of the TipTopArtists as a gift some time ago. Doesn't the boy look lovely in his grown-up suit. He grew up to be an outback, however, as can be seen in the fabric image on the top right which he is pictured with his gun. I printed Destination on a transparency and sewed it down with machine. The outback figure is mounted onto a piece of vintage lace which was first sewn onto the background. Finally I added sepia coloured lace at the bottom and some vintage buttons alongside him. The flower trims (bought during a visit to a hugely tempting habedashery shop in Utrecht, The Netherlands) were attached with buttons and I also beaded around the edges of the outback figure.

For the second page I used the same background and again mounted vintage lace onto the centre of the page with machine. I added the vintage butterfly shaped lace on top by machine and beaded on top of it. I added the image of our outback with his mother, which I had printed out onto canvas. I added beads around this as well as well as a flowertrim as before. I added the quotation from Vincent van Gogh (I think this was a gift from Lenna!) and the Vellum piece about dress goods (from Altered Pages). To unite the 2 pages I also used the sepia lace on the bottom of this page.

Finally I sewed both pages onto the paper pages of the 8x8 7Gypsies album we're all using by machine using zig-zig stitch and at the same time couching down a sepia wool yarn. I made holed, again with my Crop-o-Dile (I do LOVE this machine!) so Debby can add the pages to her album the minute she receives them in the mail!

Despite the fact that I miss colour I have to admit that using a reduced colour scheme gives a lot of unity to these pages!

Lisa's Crown album

I've finished my final spread for the ArtisticJourneyinColor Round Robin journals and this one was for Lisa, the owner of Collagestuffs. Her theme was crowns and by some chance (or this is another exemple of synchronicity) I was in a second hand book shop last week and bought a book published to raise money for the civilian victims of the First World War, dedicated to H.M. The Queen (not our present one, but her grandmother). I used text from that book to make a fabric/paper collage which I liberally sprinkled with sparkle. I made a background out of a velvety fabric in cream which I free machine quilted and added the collages with satin stitch applique. The transparency on page 1 is from Divasdeste and so are the fabric images on page 2 which were all together on one image which I cut apart into 3 different parts, 2 of which are in the top corners and the lady is the third part

The edges of the spread were finished by stitching a transparent beige ribbon around the edges and adding a button in each of the 4 corners. The transparency of the crown on page 2 is from Paperwhimsy. I added beading around the edges of the collage and I'm really pleased with how the spread looks together in her album.

The album went in the mail to Lucinda today and I just really need to add up how much this has all cost me in postage but so far I haven't had the courage to check that out!!

Mystery Pages for Gale

I finished my pages in Gale's Mystery album today. I loved the theme and almost as soon as I thought of it, Venice came to mind. To me this is the city of mysteries par excellence. I have used several new techniques in these pages, some of which I will be writing about in an article for a Dutch stamping magazine in due course so I won't reveal it here yet. I will just mention however that I used stamps from the Venetian Collection from Stampington. I also used canvas to print on, as I simply fell utterly in love with Abby's canvas pages. She used digital imagery and then prints this out on canvas and the texture is just gorgeous. I managed to find several different inkjet canvas sheet suppliers here in the U.K. as Abby's suppliers are not shipping to the UK as yet, and am trying them out. The image of the Rialto bridge on page 1 of the spread is printed on canvas. For the background fabric I used a stunning woven one from Cabbage Patch fabrics. On page 1 I used one side of it and on page 2 the other. No saying what the right side is as they are equally amazing.

I added gold PearlEX powder to the Rialto image as well as to other parts of the collage. There is beading around the edges of all the images and cross stitch on the background in various colours. I added a vintage button to page 2, added gold metallic rub-on and then stamped the word Mystery on the button.
I'm really pleased with how the pages look put together into Gale's album. I've painted the edges of her paper gold to tone in with the pages themselves, which are attached with double sided tape onto the pages.

For the first time ever since we started our Round Robin adventure, I really wanted to keep these, but I still have plenty of the background collage left and I will be making more art with this to use to illustrate my article in due course.

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:

Round Robin Album and another ATC

Today was a truely atrocious day here in the Scottish Borders. It rained non-stop all night and when I went to walk the dogs (dressed most fetchingly in blue plastic trousers and jacket for me, Troi in a blue coat and Rueben au naturel) the old railway path was just like a river, where I had to wade through taking care not to let the water get over the top of my wellies. Needless to say there was a white greyhound who thought I had taken leave of my senses (maybe she was right!!). Rueben however simply thought this new addition to our path had been provided solely for his entertainment and he made the most of it!

Spending the rest of the day in my studio seemed a very good idea. I worked on my spread in Bev's Round Robin Album. Her theme is Friendship and she did not specify any colours but the album so far has gorgeous examples of art, all quite subdued in colour so I did not want to supply too much of a contrast. I made the fabric collage for the album some days ago, using ephemera pictures of what looked like friends to me, old dictionary pages, pictures of pansies from a very old flower book and text from a Friendship sheet (given to me by Linda Kunsman, thanks Linda!!). I layered napkins with more pansy images on top as well as a napkin featuring eggs and flowers combined. I cut out the spreads (size 6 x 8.5", love this size, Bev!!) featuring the pictures exactly where I wanted to them.

I had been thinking about friendship quotes and found: A life without friends is like a garden without flowers, and this had been what inspired me to use the pansies, which look like lovely nodding, friendly flowers. I added this quote spread out over the 2 pages using a Dymo label writer.

The collages were stitched onto a felt background for stability and I sewed around the quotation by machine, added a lot of hand stitching (seed stitch) in a Stef Francis variegated thread and beaded around the quotation with a mix of yellow, green, blue and purple beads. Just hope Bev will like this.

I won't mail the album out till Monday. I'm getting quite obsessive now about only mailing out on that day but so far (knock on wood!!) this has served us well so I will continue with it.

I also finished some ATCs for a swap on the ATcards site listed as a No Theme Fabric Swap. You will recognize the background from my previous post for the Black/White Swap. I had so much background left that it seemed like a shame not to use it. I combined it with a fabric I had in my stash, with a lot of coffee related sayings and images in black, white and red. With a bit of red beading around the words they worked out well so that's another project out of the way.

I finished my Journal Quilt for Houston (hurrah!!), so now I can put that safely away till the instructions arrive for the sleeve and how to get it across the Atlantic in due course. Will show the pictures of this one once the Houston Quilt Festival opens towards the end of October. I'll just tease you by saying that I'm over the moon with how it worked out!!

Sunset At Macbiehill

I've been stitching on my large quilt all today and my fingers now hurt so much I simply could not do anymore today and I have the feeling tomorrow will also be a non-stitching day as far as quilting is concerned. I will try beading some inchies on a garden theme which are finished but for the beading and edge stitching. This is not half so hard on my hands as the large quilt.

I spend this evening looking at various other blogs on the Embellishment Ring and it's amazing how easy it is to get lost in other people's lives! I suddenly looked sideways and this is the amazing sky that caught my eye, just looking out of our dining room window. It's such a good picture to go with my quotation today that I simply had to share it with you all! This was the quotation that day: When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with all other stars all singing and shining together as one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty. (John Muir).

I've also added a Photoflick (from my website www.picturetrail.com/friedaquilter ) of the Round Robin albums I've worked in so far at the bottom of this blog. Check it out as we are really almost half way now and the albums are getting more beautiful and full! Can't wait to see my Passion album once it gets back here by the end of the year. I'm mailing off Debby's album to Lucinda tomorrow!

Debby's Round Robin Album

Debby's album arrived just before the Loch Lomond Show, so I was a very good girl and left it safely in its box till I could give it my full attention. It really is a magnificent album with some glorious art in it. I have to admit that colour wise this album is close to my heart. Its pink and orange combination is simply wonderful. I just love all the hot colours (my own album is red and gold) so this one was just what I needed to unwind after the show. Debby's theme is vintage people and I went with vintage children. Conveniently there was an article in the paper dedictated to vintage pictures of children with their pets some weeks back and I saved it to make the collage for her album.

For page 1 I machine stitched orange velvet with pink thread using one of the decorative stitches on my machine. I mounted this on a background of pink and added 4 pieces of the collage to this with satin stitching. I found just the right button for the centre at one of the traders' stands at the Loch Lomond Show. On one of the collages I added a transparency (from Divasdeste) and all the collages were surrounded by beading, 2 of them pink and 2 orange. I added some sparkly orange flowers at some places.

For the facing page, I used an orange fabric mounted onto wadding (batting US speak!) and added another piece of the collage, featuring more children playing. Added sparkly orange flowers and surrounded it with alternating pink and orange beads. On top I added the final piece of the collage which had a flower shape (which reminded me of the sun!). This was mounted on a frayed piece of pink silk fabric. The text to the left reads: those were the good old days, which was machine stitched on and surrounded by pink beads.

Finally I added some square sequins (again bought quite some time ago in anticipation of this album!) with beads to left and right of the sun.

Debby's album was too large for the scanner so these pages were photographed with my camera. Finally I'm showing you a detail of page 1, which has the http://www.divasdeste.com

transparency on it as this is my favourite bit of this entire spread!

Yet again this has now become my favourite spread in the Journals so far and I have a sneaky feeling it might stay my favourite as I just love the colours and the collage I made was such a good one.

Angels and appropriately also good news!

I found I did not want to leave any unfinished projects while I was gone so today I went full force ahead and finished Sanna's angel spread. I had been working on it for a while but did not know the exact size till Sanna's album actually arrived here. Now I could finalize all the bits and pieces and I know I say this with every album but I'm ever so pleased with it and hopefully Sanna will be too!

The first page features a piece of my fabric collage, together with angels cut from a fabric and applied unto the background using fabric mod podge. The bottom blue bit was left over from my June Journal Quilt and I knew it would go well with Sanna's blue angels so I made a larger piece than I needed. I added beads as a halo around the angel's head and also beaded around the angel quotation which reads:

If I have freedom in my love

And in my soul am free;

Angels alone, that soar above,

Enjoy such liberty.

Finally I added the large letter charms on the bottom. They are both glued (to stop them from moving!) and held down with a bead.

Page 2 is entirely made up by one of my fabric collages (I will use it again printed out on fabric for my December Journal Quilt in due course). Some of the angel images are from www.collagestuff.com and other images have been torn out of various magazines. I also used napkins on the collage I added some decoupage images (South Blackberry Design on Ebay) with matte medium so they look a bit waxy. Added another quotation:

It came upon the midnight clear,

That glorious song of old,

From Angels bending near the earth

To touch their harps of gold;

"Peace on the earth, good will to man

From Heaven's all gracious King",

The world in solemn stillness lay

Again I've beaded halos around the angels' heads and also around the quotation.

I have received some great news by e-mail. My quilt Rising above the waves has been accepted into the From the Heart exhibition: a special exhibit of European Art Quilts, which will be travelling as a Special Exhibit with the Mancuso World Quilt and Textile on Tour XI, beginning Aug 16, 2007 in Manchester, NH, then on to PA National Quilt Festival, Harrisburg, PA, Sept. 6-9, Pacific International Quilt Festival, Santa Clara, CA, Oct. 11-14 and Greter Chicago Quilt Festival, Chicago, IL, Nov. 2007. I've added some pictures of the quilt itself (see above) and a detail for you to have a littel look!

This quilt was made in reaction to the theft of my Blue Waves quilt (see the full story of that sad event on www.picturetrail.com/friedaquilter in the relevant album), to show that I did eventually manage to rise above the waves caused by that theft! The quilt was heavily hand quilted with embroidery thread and also hand-beaded.

I'm so pleased to have left a more or less clear worktable in my studio and once I'm back again I'm all ready to start tacking a large quilt which will probably be called Tod und Leben in due course. I'm not that partial to tacking but as after that I get to start stitching and beading which are my absolute favourite parts of quilt making, I guess I will just have to get on with it asap so I can start enjoying myself. Still waiting on some gorgeous yarn from an Etsy shop for this quilt too which hopefully will be here by the end of this coming week, just like me!!

Dance spread and another bracelet

I had fun yesterday during a spiral rope bracelet class at the Bead Shop in Haddington. I loved making this one as having a needle in my hand seems to be what I was born to do! I also managed to acquire enough beads to make another 2 or 3 bracelets (or should I be honest and admit to 4 or 5??!!).
Adriayna on the www.atcards.com site who I had swapped ATCs with a number of times, discovered this blogsite and wondered if I was interested in swapping a Journal spread (i.e. 2 pages) with her. She is working on pages for my Passion journal which I will add once the journal comes home at the end of this year and I promised I would make pages for her dance-themed journal. I planned to do this when I'm over in Holland next week but somehow I started gathering bits and pieces for it, and the next thing I knew I was hard at work on the pages. It was specially tempting as I could do the stitching and beading outside and it was glorious sunshine so I was ever so pleased to have an excuse. The pages both use Lost Art Creations images. On the first one I used a dancing couple from a paper collage sheet which was a free LAC gypsy sheet several months back and you will probably realize that the collage was originally made for my May Journal Quilt. As May means dancing around the May Pole here in the U.K. it seemed appropriate! The green background is a ribble velvet from the Cabbage Patch fabric shop.

On the other spread I used another free LAC image, this time an inkjet vellum one, of a guitar playing woman on the bottom bit of the page and over the top bit there is a transparency from Flower Power II. I'm really pleased with how the pages turned out. They look really warm and summerlike. I hope Adriayna will like them too!

Finally I popped down to the Borders Bookshop today which was madness as the traffic jams were horrendous. I did however manage to buy both the April and May copies of the Craft Stamper and 2 beading books (yes, I've definitely got the bug!!).

Also Sanna's album dedicated to Angels has arrived safely (well it just had too, protected by so much angel power!) and I will be starting work on my spread, probably when I come back again next friday!

More Passion

It seems like ages since I last posted but it has in reality only been 3 days. I've been busy, not so much working but stocking up with supplies. Mysteriously my 24" ruler disappeared into some black hole. It's hard to understand how such a large item can go walk about but the truth is it had simply vanished. As I can't live without this most vital piece of equipment I went to the Fabric shop in Melrose yesterday to buy another one as I love the ones she stocks. The lines are in red, very easy to see and made in Australia. I also stocked up on some fabric glue and a fat quarter featuring collies. I have a neighbour who has 3 and thought it might come in handy for eventual Xmas presents.

I'm working on my June Journal Quilt. I'm not exactly doing these in chronological order but who cares?

I realize that you've not seen all the pages in my Passion album yet. This came to mind when someone on the www.atcards.com group wanted to swap journal pages with me and I asked her to make a page for this album which I can then add once the journal returns to me by the end of this year. I've uploaded the back of the album for you to enjoy! Some lovely work is being done by my fellow artists on the Artistic Journey and I can't wait to see it all once the journal comes home. I'm planning to have a one woman party blow out when that happens!

My pages for Deann's album

Today I finished my pages for Deann's album. This has the theme of the months of the year and I choose August to do as this is the month of my birthday (on the 29th!). Her colours were cream, brown and one other colour. As usual I made a fabric collage first, using a lovely selection of napkins (or serviettes if you're in the U.K.!) which will also serve for my August Journal Quilt in due course, and then scanned the collage into my computer, printed it out on HP Transfer paper and ironed it onto a really lovely white cotton sateen fabric I bought recently in Cabbage Patch Fabrics (a wholesale fabric place about 30 minutes from home (very convenient!! and much too tempting!).

On the first page I used a large part of the transferred image on a background of cream coloured fabric with a leave pattern, mounted on wadding (batting in U.S.). I added an transparency image (from www.divasdeste.com Kirchner Women sheet), a very old vintage trim (Ebay) and charms of bumble bees, the sun and a rose. The original fabric collage has lots of rose images as August is the month when my old roses in the garden are at their very best! I added beading and the title Pleasures and Pastimes which comes from the selvedge of a fabric.

On the facing page I used a selected part of the transferred image collage only, with the view of a village and with a postmark in August. I layered this on top of red fabric, then the same cream leaved one and red again + wadding. Added hand stitching, vintage buttons, a gold, heavily machine quilted piece left over from a previous project and added lots, and lots of beads. I'm really happy with the pages, in fact I'm going to find it hard to part with them and might well end up making a small art piece for myself along the same lines. I've got the collage saved in my computer so can print it out again whenever I fancy it. I do this whenever I really love one of the collages I make so I can use it up and know I can also re-use it when the fancy takes me.

Abby's album went in the post to Lucinda today by Airsure (£20.50) , and Theresa's album arrived safely with Lucinda last Friday, so at the moment things are moving smoothly through the mail. I have removed Johoanna's pages from both Abby and Deann's albums and will mail these to her in Australia as soon as we hear from her again after her move. I've also copied the instructions and sign-in pages so she will know what to do for them too! I won't mail out Deann's album to Lucinda till I know Abby's has arrived safely. This way we only have to worry about one album at a time!

I think next album I will receive is Sanna's one which is themed Angels, so I'll be on the hunt for angel related images and fabrics!! This is almost more fun than can be legal!!

I've finished Abby's album and another LAC piece

I finished my pages for Abby's album today. The theme of this album is The Blues and I have to admit I did not know a lot about this. Abby had included a music CD in her album to give us some idea of what the music was like and I listened to this several times after the album arrived. I had also read an article in the newspaper about the death of James Brown and saved a quotation by him. Then I checked out musical fabrics on www.equilter.com and found several really beautiful ones, which also fitted in nicely with Abby's chosen colour scheme. Finally I made a fabric collage with blues pictures, music napkins and the text of Singing the Blues incorporated in it. For my first spread I layered up several of the musical fabrics with batting and added blues pictures I had printed out on fabric. The one of the quartet playing I printed out at a larger size than the pixels really allowed to get a hazy image as I imagine the places where the blues were played must have been seen through a haze of cigarette smoke. I used this picture twice and beaded around the edges. I added the James Brown quote, again printed on fabric, this time in label form so I could stick it straight on. I found a charm of a guitar and added this, glueing it but also holding it down with a bead.

On the second page, I choose the piano fabric as my background, added a strip of a different musical fabric and added a square of my fabric collage featuring the word Blues. I added pictures of one blues player, one larger one and 3 smaller ones for balance. I cut a smaller piece from the collage with the text of Singing the Blues and added it to the right hand corner. I think this page is my favourite as I was really pleased with my collage and also because the piece reads like a smoky, hazy athmosphere. I hope I did Abby's Blues justice!



Now it will be time to start thinking about August, my theme for Deann's album. I choose August as that's when my birthday is and also I love the summer months! I've already made the fabric collage which will serve as its starting point!



Finally I had quite a bit of the Blues collage left over and decided to make a Lost Art Creations ATC with this, which is also ATC no. 48 of my 100 ATC project. This is it, called Reverse of Fortune. The boy image is from LAC Boys to Men inkjet vellum sheet, the ribbon from one of the vintage trim packs, the bingo charm from LAC Artbit pack 0236 and the cigar band came from one of Terrie's gifts she sends out with your order. I love cigar bands and they always make me feel nostalgic as my grandfather (opa) had a large collection. No idea where it is now but seeing one brings the memories flying back. I love the story I thought up, with the men lounging about in the background and the innocent boy in front but I leave you to think up your own tale!

Bonjour Clotilde!

Another of my Lost Art Creations ATCs done as a guest artist. The background is a quilted piece of yellow fabric (dating back to my City & Guilds course in the early 90's!), which I cut up. I've decided to recycle all my samples as they are only sitting in cupboards and gathering dust. This way they get a new lease of life.

I then printed on the fabric in different colours, using little square Hero Arts stamps. I added the transparency (from LAC sheet La Muse) by stitching it on. Checked out my vintage paper LAC pack and found a suitable quotation (she really looks like a Clotilde to me!), which I glued on top of the transparency. I stitched the whole lot onto a watercolour ATC card and added the trim (from an LAC trim and fiber pack) by straight machine stitching. It still lacked something and I added the wooden heart button as the final touch.

My art now in Theresa's album and more LAC art!

I've spend today amalgamating Theresa's 2 albums and sewing in my pages. They look great now that they are on facing pages and here is the picture:

Then I decided to stop beaded that flipping quilt for today and make some more LAC art.(LostArtCreations, see link on the right!).

Rather than make another ATC I made a Squared Art piece (5" sq.) using as the background another collage which I sprayed with Adirondacks acrylics after it had dried. Wonderful stuff, just have to watch I don't cover the entire kitchen in it!

It featured an Italian landscape in the background, music notes, and flowers and somehow made me think of weddings.

So I added a couple (from the My Love inkjet vellum sheet) using stitching to attach them to the background, found a really appropriate quotation in a vintage book ("It seems wonderful to think that you are my wife. I can scarcely believe it - even yet!") . To emphasize the theme of eternal love I added the circle (from LAC transparency sheet Ironwork) and added a clock face (from 7Gypsies) and a heart brad (from Artchix Studio) It made sense to add 3 more heart brads in the centre of the piece and a peach coloured flower brad (from www.TheHappyHammer.com) to finish off the piece. I then mounted it on watercolour paper and zigzagged stitch with gold thread around the edges. Hope Terrie (from LAC) likes it, it's one of my pieces as her guest artist.

I was definitely on a roll by now and decided to tackle a swap I had signed up for on the www.atcards.com list themed: Altered Postcards. The idea was to cut an ATC sized piece out of a commercial postcard and alter it in some way. I bought my postcards from Paperchase and here is one of them: the original postcards was of (Altered?) VW Beetles, so I added a transparency from www.divasdeste.com and added the text: Is that my getaway car? I've made some more, look out for these tomorrow as I want to do some beading around the edges of those.

A great day, artwise, and the weather helped by being wonderfully sunny, in fact it felt like spring!

Theresa's First Album arrives and other musings

Oh what a relief when the postie delivered Theresa's first album this morning. It had been travelling since the 11st December. I almost kissed him, would have done if it had been my regular one but he is off with stress (probably from delivering my mail!!). It's really gorgeous and I'm so happy it's safe. The replacement one is also in Scotland and will probably be delivered tomorrow by Parcelforce, I reckon. Fingers crossed!!

I did a lot of beading on a log cabin (with a twist!) quilt but found time to make an ATC for the Whatever Your Heart desires lottery on the MailArtbyDesign Yahoo Group. The image is from a CD by Enchanted Mercantile. I printed a whole sheet but forgot about the printing margins so this face only printed out half. I made a virtue of it by making it look like she is just peeking in! My hearts desire is a trip to La Bella Italia, to relief the endless dark, cold and wet days here in Scotland.

I had originally made another ATC for this swap but as happens regularly could not bear to part with this one, it came out so sweet! Here is it: To part is our human lot. The transparency is from www.divasdeste.com and the gentleman originated at www.tophatdesignworks.com . I love the fact that snowdrops made it on the collage I used as background as just today I saw the first one in the garden!

I also received my Artchix Poste d'Amour sticker sheets on which my ATC My Heart with pleasure fills features (see that one on an earlier post). They are all gorgeous and I can already tell I'll have trouble parting with them on envelopes etc.!

I've ordered a tool with which to apply diamante crystals to celebrate the arrival of Theresa's album as I want to add some to a cushion I thought was finished but now I think it might need some more sparkle! Of course they will probably appear on ATCs too!

My spreads in Theresa's album

The theme for Theresa's album is Manuscript and Letters, which made me think about where letters start, and for most people this is in school. I made a fabric collage background using letters in as much languages as I could find, such as Chinese, Polish, Hebrew, German Gothic etc. Theresa's first album used a lot of green so I wanted to go with that too and added a napkin, featuring the alphabet in various languages. to the mix. I had an old class book and used that in the centre. I found both a suitable school mistress and an unhappy looking pupil at www.paperwhimsy.com and discovered I had some old pages from a school book which seemed really appropriate such as: I can write my name, We learn to read and The teacher will praise your work. Finally I added a strip of alphabet letters, mounted the whole on a fabric, printed with writing and beaded around the edges.

For the facing page I decided to produce a page from the notebook of our naughtly pupil. She is beginning to master the writing process but can't help spilling the odd ink blot here and there. Fortunately she can repair her quote using stitch! For the background I used another commercial fabric printed with writing mounted on cotton batting. On top I added a transparent fabric again with lettering which was stain dyed. A piece of smaller green fabric, the same as on the facing page to create unity, and finally the text was added using both hand and machine stitching in all these layers. I thought of the text (so really it's my quotation!) and printed it out on adhesive cotton inkjet fabric. It was really white and this gave me the idea of the ink blots! I added buttons and a strip of numbers (the selvedge of the green fabric). The quotation reads:

Letters are the forms

that shape the words,

which make the sentence

and tell the story of our lives.

I'm really pleased with how the pages turned out, just hope Theresa likes them too and that her album will arrive shortly. We have more or less given up on her first one but the second one should be here any day now!

More Passion

I'm adding a picture from my Passion album, so you can get an idea of what it is going to be like. Hopefully it will eventually return (December 2007) red hot with all those passionate images everyone else will add. What fun.

I will also use this blog to chat away about other things as they happen in my life. Mainly art but a bit of life might also edge in. Because my life is art and my art is my life!!

My first posting

I've started this blog to muse on the Round Robin journals I'm going to be doing in 2007 with 11 other artists. As part of the experience I'm going to have a record of what I'm doing for all the different journals including my own. I've already made my own journal and mailed it off to Johoanna in Australia where I'm pleased to say it has arrived safely.

My journal is on the subject of PASSION with red and gold the colours I'm using. Don't know what made me think of passion, but the colours are my favourites. Passion just seemed to go well with them. Also I'm such a sucker for love and romance!!

I'm now awaiting Theresa's album which is geared towards words and letters. What a great idea. I've made a background using fabric, tissue paper, paper napkins and watered down PVA glue.

I've added letters from Hebrew, cyrilic script (polish newspaper), greek, french etc. I've seen her own pages and have used colours to go with that as I will be the very first artist to contribute to hers. Quite nerve racking but also very, very exciting!!