Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Inbox and Outbox

Point the first: Quilty Conscience postcards are done and posted. The challenge was to use painted fabric. I used vilene that I had dyed and over-painted with acrylic, then stamped, then stenciled with xpandaprint and then embroidered. *falls over exhausted*



Point the second: I've been very lucky, with many gorgeous 1-4-1 ATC swaps arriving in the mail. It's so much fun, and I'm getting to swap with a lot of new people.

From Left to right: Diane Whatford, Roz Veevers and Jude Wagner


Lisa Manyweathers and Janet Hamblin


Roslyn McGechan and Ann Lawton


Point the third: I've made a couple more of my own to send out, using quotes from Peter Pan:


All business now attended to! Now, to watch the opening ceremony of the Olympics!

Monday, July 28, 2008

Skinny Book Swap

Here are my pages for the skinny book swap - it's been a while since I had to make a large number of anything, and I completely miscalculated the amount of time I needed to get through. But I survived, and I really enjoyed making the pages - I played a lot with my pastels to get the shading on the earthbound angel's halo, and for the edging. It's the first time I've used my own handwriting in my art, too - that was fun and a little bit daring. And Stephanie was invaluable help with trimming edges and cutting things to size. She's a mathematical whiz. *hugs* Thanks, Steph!



The back was just pure collage fun - I got to use some gold paper edging, and a lot of gold paint. Bliss!



I'm really looking forward to the rest of the pages coming in to me - then I can decide how I'm going to bind it, and make some covers.

Debbi and other Quilty Conscience people - I am so, so sorry for holding you up another week - the postcards are all but done, they just need edging. A thousand apologies for being such a slacker.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Treasure from the mail man!

Treasures and delights have rained down upon my head! I love getting arty mail.

I'm really excited to have the first few pages for the Angelic chunky books swap on [chunkybookartists]. It's the first art-book swap I've gone in for a few years, and I'm really looking forward to it.
From left to right: Teresa Crouch, Ann Spiteri, and Carol Sweeney


Some [Stamphappy] 1-4-1 ATC swaps:
From Gwenyth Zwaan, and in a beautiful envelope with a lovely quote by Goethe.


From Sharon Batchelor, in a beautifully made folder with some German scrap tucked into one pocket.


From the left, cards from Narelle Cox, and two from Kaeren Sutherland


Again from the left: Rikki Showell, Pam Addicott and Julie Price


Here's what I've been up to, in between frantically finishing my Quilty Conscience postcards:
This one was a challenge to myself to make an ATC using only rubber stamps.


Guess what I bought? A white gel pen! Hooray! Let's put it on everything!


I also bought a big wooden box to put my pastels and pencils and watercolour tubes in, so they're all a lot easier to get to now. Hence, there's a lot of pastel shading on these cards. Pastel shading, and more gel pen. (Actually, I had to hide the white gel pen from myself. Seriously, little white dots are even more addictive than Shiva stiks.


These three are studies for what I'm going to be doing on my own chunky book page:


Now! Back to sewing! Sewing, sewing, sewing, because the postcards were due 16 days ago. *hangs head in shame*