Another Round Robin Page

Here are the pages I finished this week for Debbie's book. Her theme is "Family Tree" and she wanted us to add photos of our immediate family. She used a chipboard flower-shaped book which she covered in Basic Grey papers.

I drew the tree shape freehand and colored it in with a marker. Then I scribbled brown Liquid Applique inside the shape and heated it with a heat gun. It puffed up and looks very barklike. I had found the quote in a catalog and knew immediately I wanted to use it for my page. I intended to stamp it, but I liked the look of the white letters on the darker background and ended up cutting the word blocks and using them as is.

I punched the photos, glued them to flattened bottle caps and applied a coat of Diamond Glaze over the top. Can you believe of all the stamps I own I didn't have one family-themed stamp! I did find a $1 clear stamp set for the word family and for the little tag at the top on the back. The hardest part of this project was finding current photos of everyone!

Weekend of Art

I had a really productive weekend of art. I am almost finished a set of 23 western 3"x5" collages that will be swapped at the western retreat I'm attending later this month. I also made a soldered collage charm for a friend (well, I still have to solder it, but the collage work is done). I'll be posting these items in the next day or two.

I received the last altered book for the swap for my online group. This book is for Carol and her theme is "games." I finished two spreads today.

The first is "Fun and games - take time to play." For the background on this spread I swiped Rocket Red Brilliance ink straight from the inkpad directly on the pages. I triangle folded a center page so that it would form a pocket on the left page of the spread. I glued on two little plastic checker pieces so this pocket can be closed. I glued four star-shaped playing cards under the triangle. I made a diagonal cut across the next page and folded it in half toward the center of the book, forming a vertical pocket which holds a picture of a game board and directions for Triominoes. The right page has a tag attached which folds out for the word "play."

Since I am the last of four people to work in this book, I was at a loss as to what to do for the next spread, as it seemed that all the "games" had been used. Then I started thinking of ballgames and I came up with this baseball spread. The background was painted with a watery wash of green acrylic paint. On the left page I used a baseball printed paper and attached a copy of the song sheet cover for the song "Take me out to the ballgame." I sewed this on with red embroidery floss to mimic the stitching on the balls. The right page has two different baseball-themed papers with the lyrics of the song attached. The various words which are scattered mostly on the left page were cut from another patterned paper. I "tipped in" the Cracker Jack packaging and "prizes."

Still one more spread to do before the July 15th deadline!