Puzzle pieces again

This piece is for Sherry. She wanted an Art Deco piece.
This is the last piece I finished and it is for Michelle. Her theme was mermaids and the sea. I used the same clipart of a mermaid for another mermaid theme. Added some trim from the sewing room on the bottom and a glass marble on the top.
From Katherine - this makes 11 pieces that I have received so far. My puzzle is getting close to being completed. Still waiting on only 4 more.

Deco - In the Eye of the Beholder

Vanessa's deco was a challenge. The theme was In The Eye Of The Beholder. I finally found some pictures that I used as starting points and had fun from there. The writing on the bottom of the right pages is supposed to say "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" - I hope that is correct and that it isn't something rude.

Mama Always Said Deco

This is my deco for our 14th group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DivaDecoSwappers/. The theme for this one is Mama Always said. The cover is above. The picture of my Mother is from 2001 when she was 87 years old. It was taken at my sister's house at a Sunday dinner - one of my Mother's favorite things to look forward to all week.
Here is the sign in page - I have provided tags for everyone to decorate.
Here are some of the things I can remember my Mother saying - I can still hear her voice saying "Clean your plate - there are starving children in China". Didn't make any sense then and it still doesn't now.

My favorite thing my Mother said is on the cover - I love you!

Deco's on the move

I have been trying to get caught up on my decos. I have several here and I spent time last night trying to identify what group they were from, who the owner is and then worked on two of them. The above spread is for a Day of the Dead deco. I did one of these earlier for my daughter who loves the Day of the Dead holiday. In fact, I even made her a Day of the Dead purse a few years ago.
The second one that I completed is for a Children's Literature deco. The Dr. Seuss is from a Barnes and Noble gift card holder that I got for Christmas last year. I mounted it on a thin cork background and then stamped swirls on it. On the other side, I started with corregated paper and other paper scraps. I had some cute stickers of Peter the Rabbit and friends that I used for this deco.

I have several more to work on - hopefully will be all caught up by the end of the week.

Puzzle pieces I have received - part 2

From Sherry
From Saundra
From Syliva
From Vanessa

They are all so different and so wonderful. The average size of my pieces is about 2 1/2 by 2 1/2. The other ranged from very small (about 1 x 1) to quite large (4x4). The smaller ones are hard to do - it is hard to decorate something that small - can't find images that look good that small.

Puzzle pieces I have received

This piece is from Marysia
From Gayle S
From Marilyn
From Brittney
From Gayle C
From Carol.

I have 4 more pieces that blogger wouldn't let me upload. I will try again tomorrow. So far I have received a total of 10 out of 15. My theme was sewing/quilting and everyone has been so creative with my theme. The puzzle I used has a small border around it and I think it will cover it with buttons after I get all the pieces back.

This is the second puzzle swap I have done - both with the same theme. Unfortunately, the last one is missing a piece. I think I can make a new piece out of balsa wood and decorate it but just haven't gotten around to it yet.

Still More Puzzle Pieces

I managed to finish 5 more pieces today, only 2 more to go. This one is for Sylvia. Her only theme was vintage or blue so I tried to do both. First covered the piece with my trusty dictionary pages. Then brushed on blue paint and wiped it off. Put the word harmony on with a rub-on, glued on some crumpled tissue paper and a small embroidery piece. Finally glued on some cute flower sequins to finish it.
This piece belonged to Brittney and again had no theme. It is hard to work on them with no theme. I loved the size and shape of this piece. I painted it with the green and then stamped the face and crown on. Added jewels to the crown and then used an ink pad around the edge of the piece. Lastly I used glitter glue to make designs on the piece.
Finally one with a theme - Faerie. I used the last of the dictionary page to cover this one. I found a good faerie picture to add to the center and a jeweled flower to put on the upper right. I then put on letter beads to spell out faerie and some paint around the edges to finish it off.
Another theme - this was a fairly large piece. I painted it with the same green paint and then covered it with a picture of fruits. I then stamped a peach on it (Georgia is the peach state) and some swirls. I then used my label buddy to print out eat your vegies. Highlighted it with a silver ink pad to finish it.
Last piece for today. I have wanted to use a bottle cap. I punched out a picture of a rose and then filled the cap with Diamond Glaze - it looks much better in person than the picture shows. This is a very small piece that belongs to Gayle C. Her only theme was vibrant. I started by painting it red, highlighted with silver, glued on the bottle cap, a little fabric stuffed star and some glitter to finish it off.

More Puzzle Pieces

I finished up two more puzzle pieces last night and they are in the mail today. One goes to Australia and the other to Scotland. Hope I put enough postage on them. These look much better in person than they do in the photo. The one on the left was for Karen and she did not have a theme. I covered the piece with dictionary pages and then stamped ART all over it. Added some jewels to finish it off.

The second was is for Marysia and was a much larger piece. Here theme was Pink. I started by painting it with pink acrylic paint. I added part of a paper doily to it while it was wet. I added a button, a small butterfly made from sequins, a couple of tiny tags, a silver fabric star, and lastly the domino. I then took a silver ink pad and highlighted areas around the objects.

I also completed the start of my Elvis deco but forgot to take pictures of it before I put it in the mail.

I still have 5 more puzzle pieces to work on. I have two preped on my worktable and hope to finish them today and the rest tomorrow.

Third Round of Collage RR and Puzzle Swap

The above collage belongs to Anne. It was already beautiful when it arrived at my house for round 3 of 6. I got out my stamps and stamp pads to start with and added the swirl design in the center. I then added the oriental lettering - according to the stamp, it means happiness. I then crumpled up tissue paper and applied it with gel medium. It needed a little more so I took an old dictionary page and tore out a couple of pieces and put them on. The last paper I added was an interesting picture of colored eggs that I cut out of a newspaper and found in my stack of papers to be filed.

I then stamped a few dragonflies in various areas and stamped the words create and art in gold - very light and hard to see. Lastly, I put a couple of pieces of yarn on the upper left, again using gel medium. Since 3 more people have to add to it, I figured I better stop.
Next project on my list is overdue. We are doing a puzzle swap on CPS http://groups.yahoo.com/group/clothpaperstudio/. Each person sent out a piece to work on to 15 other people (each puzzle has 15 pieces). When they came they were all different sized and shapes. Most people had a theme but a few just said to do anything - that is harder than working on a theme. The above piece is a mermaid for Carol who wanted anything related to the sea.

The above piece is for Bonnie and her theme is purple. I found a number of purple things and just put them together for her.

Halloween Book

The above images are from a Halloween Book that I participated in. Each artist made a 4x7 page for everyone and they were bound together. The first photo is of the cover. It is really well done. The wording on the cover says:

You can tell yourself it's only a story.
You can tell yourself things like this don't really happen..
You can tell yourself you've nothing to fear
But you know better..
Don't you?

It is full of wonderful creepy-crawly pages. The second photo is the page I contributed. The back of the page has Day of the Dead fabric on it that I got at one of the local Atlanta quilt shops http://www.intownquilters.com/. They have a wonderful selection of unusual quilting fabrics - lots of batiks and bright fabrics.

Black and White Fatbook

Here are some of my black and white ATCs for the Black and White ATC Fatbook swap for the Fatbooks Yahoo site. This book is a little different from the others I have participated in because of the size. Usually our pages are 4x4 but this one is ATC sized or 2 1/2 by 3 1/2. It is a lot different working in the smaller size. We each made 40 pages. Making one original and then making good copies is acceptable for this swap but I made originals this time. The cards on the front are from the dollar store - I just used the spades and clubs so have lots of red cards left. I printed vellum crowns and then stamped a face on each card. The background is printed black and white paper with words on it.

Here is the link to the yahoo group if you are interested in it http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Fatbooks/.

Jacket and Flannel Quilt

I have been busy making a quilt and jacket for the local quilt shop - Tiny Stitches http://tinystitches.com/. The above is from a pattern by my sister. Her website is http://twowackywomen.com/. The name of the pattern is Wacky Devine Nine and it is a "stack and slash" type of quilt. The center of the quilt is made from 9 fat quarters that are made into nine 9-patches. The quilt is made from flannel and is backed with the same flannel that is the inner border. I quilted it with an overall feather swirl that worked well with the flannel.

We had been talking about making a neutral colored quilt for quite a while and this is the result. I quilted it yesterday and then went to my weekly quilt guild sew-in today and finished the hand work on the binding.

Right before the quilt, I made this jacket, also for Tiny Stitches. We had several colors of chenille - this one is bright pink. I used two different coordinating fabrics for the lining. A larger floral is used for the body of the jacket and I quilted it from the lining side. I wound size 8 perle cotton on the bobbin and then quilted around the floral pattern on the fabric using 4 differenct colors. This was done around the front and back of the jacket, about 4 inches from the bottom. The quilting is approximately 10-12 inches high.

The sleeves are lined with the coordinating print in a much smaller scale. It has raw edges that I clipped every 1/4 inch. After it was completed, I washed and dryed it, creating an enormous amount of lint. I covered a large button with the small scale fabric to complete the jacket.

Calendar Round Robin

I belong to a monthly calendar round robin from the ClothPaperStudio yahoo group. We started at the beginning of the year and send the calendars to the next person on the 15th. Each artist supplied the calendar and theme that they wanted us to use.

Some used commerical calendars and some created ones on their computers. Each month is a surprise and a challenge. The above is my conribution to Cassie's calendar. Hers measured about 8x11 and was a monthly calendar with one spread for each of use to work on.

I created mine on my computer using standard-sized card stock. I can't wait to see what others have done to it when it comes home in December

Alphabetica Fatbook

A few months ago I found the Fatbooks group on Yahoo and have been hooked ever since. I love these little books. This one was based on the book Alphabetica by Lynne Perrella where she has wonderful examples of alphabet pages.

The ony rule for the pages (besides having them at the standard 4x4 inch size) was that you needed to include a stencil of the letter you chose on the page. I have a book of quilt wallpaper and used that as a basis for my page. I colleged the various papers on to a page, then copied it in color for the front and after adding my contact information, I copied it in black and white for the back. After printing, trimming and glueing, I had the 4x4 two sided pages. I then stenciled the letter Q for Quilts on the front of each page using my favorite color - lime greeen. Since I can't seem to stop, I then got out my swirl stamp and stamped a couple of swirls on each pages. That was probably enough but I had a bunch of small tags with Q on them so I punched a whole in the page and attached one to each page using some fun fibers.

Finally I decided they were done and mailed them off to the hostess. The book I got back was wonderful. The photos above are of the cover and then my pages. You can see the Q tag in the picture. This is so much fun.

We had a great time at our FiberArtBee today. We meet at the local Fiber Art store - Fiber on a Whim in Sandy Springs, GA. They have a great basement that we rent each month. This month we played with Setacolor and bleeding tissue paper. The above are the results I got today. Now that I understand more about it, I want to try to do more. It was a lot of fun playing but since we didn't really understand the process, some of the results were not exactly what we had hoped for.

It was a very hot day and by putting our fabric out in the parking lot in the sun, it only took about 20 minutes to dry. Putting it directly on the asphalt created more texture.

Sewing Deco and Rolodex Cards

I have had computer problems so haven't posted in a long time. My old computer completely died, taking everything with it and of course I had not backed it up recently. I had to get a new computer and finally decided on a laptop instead of the desktop I had. I am really loving the fact that I can move around the house with the laptop.

Lots has happened since my last post but I decided to start with a deco from my divadecoswappers group. I started it and the other wonderful artists added to it. The pictures posted backwards so the cover is on the bottom and the pages are in reverse order. Hopefully next time I will be able to get the posted correctly. I did the cover and the first spread - the green one. I love this little book.

This picture is from the same group but is the May rolodex swap. There are usually about 8 people who partipate each month and the theme changes month to month. This month was self-portraits. Mine is in the top left corner - the picture was taken when I was about two years old.

This swap is really fun. I bought an old rolodex from eBay and love filling it up with these little art treasures. So far we have done the self-portraits, March Madness and April Showers. The theme this month is June is busting out all over.