The Western Cowgirl Book

It's finished! I've done all I'm going to do - this is one of those projects you could keep adding to and never be done, but I decided this is it! This was a fun project, a great souvenir of a fab art retreat and a very chunky book!

This is the front of my book. We used portions of a pair of jeans, using the pocket on the front and some strips within the book. I found the letter tiles at the stamp convention that weekend - serendipity! That's a real miniature horse horseshoe that Jeri provided! (I said I was done, but I might just add some fabric strips and ribbon to the coil binding...)

This is the first spread - see the wooden boot on the left that I posted about earlier. This spread has a small pocket insert, the front of which you can see on the right. There are two cowgirl tags inside the pocket and I added my nametag on the front.The pocket flap opens like a book and these cowgals are inside. They are blanket-stitched on the edges.On the left is the back side of the "pocket-book-insert". Those are real rusted horseshoe nails. On the right is a tag insert stamped with a cowgirl stamp I borrowed from a friend. I love that stamp! At the lower right is a button pin Jeri gave us.This shows the back of the tag with the next page. The hat is a little felt hat that came in our "kit" from Jeri which I had to hammer a bit to squish it to fit inside the book. In the upper left corner is a yellow rose made out of two layers of torn, distressed and rolled paper circles and inside is a little rose made out of fabric.

This spread is mainly pictures of famous cowboys and cowgirls, notably Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley on the left page.

Next we have a very handsome dude on the left. The right page has the other tag I made with Linda's instructions with a grungeboard scroll which was gessoed, painted and inked. The rusted star at the bottom is from Candy - she rusted those cheap little silver sheriff badges from the party store!

And, last but not least, the final spread. The left page has a pocket which holds a cute tag copied from one Autumn had made. She provided the darling photo of the little guy on his horse and the wording "Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys." I love it. On the right is the "wanted" page with copper foil tape surrounding the pony express poster and a grungy tag with a transparency image. Don't you love that barbed wire printed twill tape? The "don't fence me in" was cut from a Cosmo Cricket paper.

And so, another year, another Gathering, another book. I wonder what the theme will be next year!?