Friday Play Date

Had another fun Friday play date with my neighbour Z. We each worked on our own projects, rather than do something together. I decided to finish up one of my round robin altered books, the theme is "my wedding day". While it was a no brainer what to do in my own book, i was a bit flummoxed as to what to do in Terrie's book. Her book is an actual wedding album, with pretty scalloped pages. She did a few spreads of her 70's era wedding in keeping with the sweet pink style of the book. So i went with that. I started by creating two fold out pages from scrapbook paper. I attached them with scotch tape and added decorative "lace" sticker borders. I created a chapel with white watercolour paper and added it to the middle. The idea is that you "open" the chapel and see the wedding inside. FYI, the topiary sticker is there just to cover the area that got messed up when the border sticker "stuck" to the paper and ripped it off. You all know what that's like!I thought about doing the whole, "here's the church, here's the steeple, open the doors and see all the people", but decided against it. Instead i did a giant wedding cake, with Jim and I perched on top. I used assorted pink and lavender papers (my wedding colours) and added bits of ephemera, sticker words and lace to accent the layers. Portfolio oil pastels added depth and shadows. Here is the whole cake - it is about 2 and half feet tall!Next i worked on a piece i totally copied, i mean that was INSPIRED BY Rebecca Sower. I saw this on her blog and wanted to try it myself. She said it wasn't completed - so i am not sure if mine is either. But it sure came out interesting. Basically select 9 images and cut them out to fit on childrens blocks. Wrap them in pages torn from a book. Then smush them so they crinkle up in a cool and tattered way. It took a while to find just the right vintage book - the paper has to be thick and a bit crumbly. Then i covered a 6" canvas board with text paper and glued the cubes onto the board with great quantities of gel medium. bit of gesso gives a softness to the words. I think this would be even cooler if the images meant something. Like the life cycle of a woman interspersed with her hobbies, something like that?

To finish out the play date i ruffled through the baggies of ephemera and images i grabbed when i came over to Z's house. I had a book of children's poems, a postcard book with sweet illustrations of birds and small animals, and the things i always seem to have on hand: sheet music, ledger paper, postcards, script, birds and butterflies. I just tore the edges of a bunch of stuff, added some brown ink to soften the edges. (thanks Z for the ink!) Then arranged a composition and glued it all to a piece of watercolour paper. Thanks Z for that too - since i hadn't brought any substrates! This took me about 10 minutes TOPS to put together. And it came out lovely. I think the key is to stick to the same tonal qualities and it just works. I suppose children, bunnies, birds and butterflies all go together too!

Around that time chips and margaritas came out,and well, crafting day was over. What a fun way to end the week!