September swaps

I joined three swaps this month.

The first one was for Halloween-themed altered trading coins.  These two were what I created and sent off, similar but different.

And these were the two I received. (Thanks to Linda and Barbara.)

The second swap was for three Halloween-themed triangles.  I sent these to three different people.

I received three back and connected them with baker's twine to create a little banner. (Thanks to Laurie, Julie and Barbara.)

The last swap was for a "girl-on-a-stick."  The challenge was to use a 6" craft stick and an image of a girl or woman and decorate as desired.

I created this one:

And received not one, but two (!) from Barbara. They are so different but I love them both.

I like joining swaps for "littles" as it keeps me active and acting at my table. I also love seeing all the variations that people come up with.

"Well-remembered" Altered Book Page

This is the latest page in my altered book.  The background is collaged book pages, white gesso, paints and stencils. The floral images are from a napkin and I stamped the friendship quote on a bit of the plain napkin and adhered it to the page.  The focal point image is from a Somerset Studio magazine which I loved and wanted to save. Since the girls needed to be grounded, I used a piece of an old book spine. I think the color coordinates well with the page.  Simple but fun!

Christmas Countdown

No, I'm not really counting down to Christmas yet but this project has been on my work table for awhile and it was time to get it done.

I salvaged this broken toy from a box I was donating. Originally the blocks had little sensors that, when the blocks were matched properly, made the animal sounds to match the images. I'd seen similar date blocks and thought it would make the perfect Christmas countdown.

This is what the original toy looked like. I sanded down all the little circle sensors, painted the base and added papers to all the sides of the two blocks. I used a 6"x6" paper pad from Authentique as they all matched and the patterns were scaled down for the 3" blocks.

I cut the numbers with my Silhouette Cameo in dark green card stock and used Mod Podge to adhere them to the blocks. I also cut the "Days til Christmas" from red card stock and added it to a strip of one of the papers on the base. 

The hardest part of this little upcycle project was determine the numbers for each block. At first I couldn't get it to work out, but then I realized that the 6 and 9 were interchangeable so I only needed one of them.  For one block I used numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; the other block has 0, 1, 2, 6, 7, 8.

I think this is a pretty and useful redo!

Color your World

We are still in Albuquerque but I thought I'd post another altered book page that I completed last week. 

This one was very simple. The background is an assortment of collaged book and music pages and a few magazine scraps. The circular focal image is actually a "business card" of a craft store in Albuquerque. I love the card and have saved it since I visited the store last year.  I wanted to continue the color wheel so I extended lines from each section of the card to the outer edges of the page. I then filled each section with watercolor, mixing colors the best I could to match the color wheel. I delineated the lines with black permanent marker and used alpha stamps and permanent black ink for the title.