Returned from retreat

I got home from my artsy retreat on Tuesday and have been catching up since then. We did some fun projects and I finished a lot of odds and ends.

We made a Peerless Watercolors travel booklet, attaching small squares of the watercolor to page protectors and labeling and swatching each on a grid inside. This is a very portable way to travel with watercolors - all you need is your booklet, something to color and a water brush. (If you've not heard of Peerless, check them out here: https://www.peerlesscolor.com)

We also played with a technique to make "eco-dyed papers." We layered leaves and bits of herbs and flowers on regular printer paper and placed between two tiles. We tied this all together with twine and boiled it for 1 1/2 hours in a pot of water with a tablespoon of alum added.  The results were interesting - some leaves printed better than others and the colors were sometimes surprising. Not sure yet what I will do with these, but it was a fun experiment.

I made two altered trading coins for an upcoming Halloween swap in August and some tiny envelope/pockets for sending the coins.

pocket - 3" square closed

I also finished several cards for a swap and for upcoming family birthdays and two little "collages on a stick" for another swap.

This was for a card swap using one of three given sketches

Simple card using a transfer I'd done years ago!

I also created 26 "pockets" using just old 12x12 papers and scraps of paper, ribbon, lace, flowers and washi tape. (I saw this tutorial on Laurie Richardson Haley's You Tube channel and thought it was genius for using up scraps!) A plus is that these are sized to fit in a regular A2 envelope. They will be great for sending little RAKs, tags, altered coins, gift cards etc.

And one of my friends was making 4x6" Halloween art for a swap and gave me one. She does awesome "creepy" work.

All in all, it was a very productive few days and the best part was spending it with friends!