This and That

Even though I wasn't blogging, I was busy creating a number of projects. I belong to a couple of Yahoo groups which offer swaps, challenges, round robins, etc. I am currently involved in three round robin deco swaps. Each of us creates a blank book which is then sent around to the other members. Each person creates art in the book. Sometimes the book has a definite theme, and others don't. The two scans following this were made for deco which has the theme of "Art." I used paper towel that had been used to clean up another project and created the background for this page. The first scan is the front, and the second the back of the same page.

Another big swap is the "Tall and Skinny" book. Each page is 3" wide and 7" tall. It will be bound on the top. Each participant had to create 26 of the same page and send it to the hostess who will sort, bind, and then return to each of this. My friend Kathy "SweetPea" Beringer is the hostess of this one (she has done more books than I can count!) and chose the theme - we were to combine pictures of animals and humans in a whimsical manner. It turned out to be a real challenge, but here's the page I created. It will be interesting to get the book back in a few weeks.

I participated in a number of swaps in the last few months. The challenge here was to create an art paper doll. I used a paper doll parts stamp from Paula Best and "real" butterfly wings.

Another swap that I joined (and it is a continuing swap with a different theme each month) is to make tip-ins. The challenge is to make a page, front and back,which can either be tipped (glued, adhered, or?) into an altered book OR to create some other way of making a book out of the tip-ins received. Many of us are punching holes and binding, either for a notebook or by using some other binding method. Here are the front and back of one of the three tip-in pages I made for the theme "Birds." Can you tell that I like poetry and songs???

Here's a two page spread in a deco book for my friend Trish Bayley who lives in the UK. She made the book using envelopes and bound it with her Bind-It-All (which I encouraged her to buy!) She had started the black and white theme, so we have followed along. I think the look is striking.

These colorful fish were created by applying alcohol inks to a transparency, then overstamping with a large Koi stamp. I layered it over bright scrapbook paper. It has the look of peering into the Koi pool.

Another tip-in theme was nature. I made three pages again and this is the front of one. I had received some lovely embellishments in a "Little Beauty" swap and used them on each front. The middle one is made of air dry black clay.

Finally, I have been playing with my Cuttle Bug and created this using the thin metal and running it through the CB using one of the new folders. I colored the embossed piece with alcohol inks.