Celtic Gothic Arch

It's really lovely when you can combine 2 different challenges in one piece of work and of course, it saves a lot of time too. Today was such a rare occasion. The theme for the Gothic Arches Challenge was for something Celtic, in honour of St Patrick's Day tomorrow.

I used to live in Ireland (Limerick) back in the early Eighties, so how could I not participate in that one.

We were also given our monthly challenge image from LostArtCreations which featured the lucky Irish four leaf clover so I immediately printed out this image twice on watercolour paper and then overlapped these two so the four-leaf clovers fitted around the outside edges of the arch. I loved the arch already at this stage.

I added a vellum image from LostArtCreations My Love collage sheet. The lady is wearing a green dress as you can see, so she immediately became Irish in my mind. A search through my Quotation book produced the text: Ireland taught me love was best, which in turn lead to the heart button at the top. The arch needed a bit more sparkle so I put some green Swarowski crystals on with my hot-tip applicator. It's a bit hard to see them on the scan (they are in the centre of the clovers).

The arch was mounted on felt and another layer of watercolour paper and then zig-zag stitched around the edges with green thread. It took about 1 hour to make and it became one of my favourite arches immediately. Occasionally speed helps to produce better work (although not always, unfortunately!!)

Happy St. Patrick's Day to all my readers!!