February Swaps

In addition to the few challenges I'm doing, I signed up for several swaps this month.  

The first one was to use a one of the foil techniques shown in this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8cqCbmiGOI

For the first card I adhered aluminum foil to a piece of card stock and ran it through a Queen of Hearts

 embossing folder. Then I colored certain areas with alcohol markers. I don't have many Copies to I didn't have a large variety of colors. This is mounted on a red mat and then on a black card.

The second card started the same way - aluminum foil adhered to a piece of card stock and then run through an embossing folder. I scored the piece into six "tiles" and then brayered white acrylic paint over the raised areas. This is mounted on a white mat on a very dark blue card. I used the same blue card stock to die cut three of the sentiments and glued them together for extra dimension.

The second swap was for a card with ribbon on it. I had been using a digital journal kit and had some leftovers so layered them on to a cream-colored card with a ribbon tied vertically.

Another swap was for "whimsical money" - we had to make two pieces for two partners. I used large pieces from an old puzzle. I covered the pieces with scraps of Gelli-printed papers and added a few more details with paint and ink. I added focal points of butterflies to three and stamped on the denominations. For the fourth, it already had the 3 and 4 printed so I used them for the denomination. I covered all with matte medium to protect them. They are certainly whimsical and "funky."

And, finally, I signed up again for the monthly junk journal page swap. The page measures 5" w x 7" high.

The front page is collaged with scraps of papers. The tuck/ journaling space flip in the lower right corner is made from a page of a magazine. I collaged on the top and bottom and used a "whale tail" punch as a closure. The tag that slips into the tuck is a large paint chip with a layers of collage papers and a vintage playing card.

The back of the page has coffee-dyed paper on it. The horizontal belly band was made with many tiny pieces of scrap papers, stamps, images, etc. glued onto a small strip of card stock. It's attached at the sides and the tag slips behind it. The tag is, again, collaged pieces of papers and a focal point of a bird.

I'm so glad these are all completed and in the mail to their recipients. I love participating in swaps as they force you "out of your box" to do something you might not do otherwise.