Retreat Projects

There were seven of us at last week's retreat and we created seven awesome projects. We do not disclose our projects before coming to the retreat, so it is amazing that there were so many varied themes and surfaces. 

First up is my project - a collaged wooden block resting on a glass pedestal and topped with a glass knob. 

One side with painted heart and key

Reverse side with house, arrow and gear

Next is a textured canvas collage. The gal who "taught" this brought just about every possible embellishment and metal pieces she owned and we just rifled through everything. Each canvas turned out totally unique!

Next is a beautiful neutral framed photo collage. Some of the flowers are store-bought and some were made from coordinating papers with the Tim Holtz Tattered Floral die.  This photo is one of my husband and his two siblings in the 1950's. I was originally black-and-white but I printed it out in sepia. I will be gifting this to my husband's sister.

This project is an open box embellished with beautiful papers, many metal pieces, paper leaves and a darling metal bird. We could choose our papers from a large assortment, so these all turned out differently too. I love the metal flourish on top.

Next up is a darling Christmas mini-album made from black pocket policy envelopes and bound with a coil binding.  This has really pretty papers with a little glitter on them and the rhinestones and beautiful flowers add the perfect touch. (I will photograph the rest of the album and post later.)

This is an easel "perpetual" calendar. One side of the flips is a monthly calendar and the other side is a card to write down birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays that don't change from year to year. The monthly cards are attached with removable tape so they can be replaced in 2019 with new ones. The gal who shared this project is a consultant for Fun Stampers Journey (a stamp company) and the easel is from that company. It would be equally cute with the month on one side and photos on the other!

And, lastly, we created a gorgeous fabric book. The base is a long piece of canvas fabric folded accordion-style with 1/4" "valleys" between each page. The cover is a vintage velvet fringe piece. We are unsure of the original use of this but it may have been a placemat (small) or maybe a prayer rug or a decorative piece to place on furniture?  At any rate, it makes a pretty cover.  The gal sharing this project brought tons of vintage lace, fabrics, trims, ribbons, flowers, etc. that she had been collecting for years. She put it all out for us to choose whatever we wanted. I will share photos of all the pages of this book in a later post as well.

As you can see, we were very busy at the retreat, but we also had some down time, lots of good food and great fun with artsy friends! It's a retreat I look forward to all year. Friends come from Utah and New Mexico as well as several from Texas and it's a blast.