Finished!

This will be my last post until next Monday. I will be leaving tomorrow for an art retreat and stamp convention - yippee!

Finished my last color page last night - this one is "verdigris and copper/bronze." I faux painted the background on watercolor paper, then added various papers, stamps, an image of a sad little girl and copper mesh fabric and a copper mesh tag. The nest is strips of text paper glued haphazardly.

It's somewhat of a relief to be done with the eleven pages and four month swap, but it's been a great challenge and lots of fun. I can't wait to receive the pages that were done for me (violet and yellow-green color scheme) - they should be arriving soon - and then assembling them into some kind of book. Another challenge!

Honeydew and Canteloupe

Now don't those sound yummy? Actually, it's the color scheme of the color page I just finished. This one is for Jeri and she has been in a shabby chic phase lately, so I tried to make this "vintagey." I love these images of little girls (from Lisa's Altered Art collage sheets - available at her e-bay store: www.stores.ebay.com/Lisas-Altered-Art ) and used them as my theme.

This didn't scan well because of the several buttons that I added. I also used sheet music, a silk flower, real lace, a chipboard "I" and a scherenschnitte lace laser cut frame I bought at a recent scrapbook convention. This is the tenth of eleven pages I am doing. Deadline for the last one is in two days as I will be hand-delivering to the recipient at a retreat we are both attending. I need to get busy!

Finished page #9

In between working both days, going to a wedding and attending a children's play this weekend, I finally put the finishing touches on another color page for the swap that's due on the 15th. This color scheme was "pale glacier blue, eggplant and silver." I struggled with these colors (there was a reason I left these pages for the end!).

I started with a very pale blue cardstock, scrubbed gray, silver, blue and white paints into it. The door is a gel medium transfer - I painted over the bottom part to make it more of a deep red. I stamped with a very pale blue paint, added a Basic Grey rubon on the left and stamped "remember." On the bottom is metal tape from the hardware store which I crimped and painted black, wiping off the excess.

Tangerine and Raspberry

It's midnight and I've just finished another color page - tangerine and raspberry this time. I've really struggled with this one. I did at least three different backgrounds and wasn't happy with any. I finally settled on this music patterned paper, inked with Worn Lipstick and Spiced Marmalade Distress Inks. The flowers are torn pieces of napkins and two pictures cut from a magazine. The wings are also cut from a napkin. I printed the quote on the computer and the little girl is a favorite image from Art-e-zine. I added Desert Rose embossing powder on the edges of the page and Judikins Egyptian Gold embossing powder on the wings. This, too, is 8 1/2" x 11". I really prefer a smaller format...

Seventh page done

Another page finished - this one uses "burgundy and dark moss green." This was a hard one for me - everything seemed too Christmasy with these colors. I finally went with the Audubon picture of birds. It doesn't show in the scan, but the background cardstock is stamped with brown leaf sprigs. The other papers and image are layered and I used some machine stitching on a few. The quote, leaves and feather are my new stamps from the sheet "For the Birds" from Time to Stamp. I love this sheet of stamps!

I'm starting to feel the pressure - only two more weeks 'til the deadline and I have four pages still to do!

Fourth page completed!

Finished the fourth page of the color swap tonight. The colors for this were "sunny orange, lemon yellor, pink and a dash of red." I painted the background with all the colors a few days ago and let it sit until I became inspired. When I looked at it today, it said "Zetti" to me (i.e. the Zettiology/Teesha Moore style.) The face is from one of Teesha's collage sheets and most of the other images were cut freeform from scrap papers and magazines. The curlycue and arms are stamps and some of the shapes are outlined with oil pastels. This was totally fun to do!

My third "color" page

I just finished my third page for the color swap - this color scheme was "the blue that is popular now" and burnt umber. I painted the background with blue and burnt umber using the edge of a credit card instead of a brush and added torn music pages which were antiqued with a gel glaze. I then stamped randomly with a text stamp and a harlequin background, created radiating brush strokes with gesso and adhered a copy of an angel statue and a strip cut from a patterned paper. I now have three down and seven to go!