Sunday, August 29, 2010

Altered Calendar August = France

Terrie's French themed calender made it back down to southern California for the month of August. I created three and a half spreads in the Van Gogh art calendar.  My first page came from a Marie Claire magazine and is actually an ad for a large craft festival in Paris.  It is in November if you are interested in attending!  I just cropped off the legs from the large image and juxtaposed them along the left edge.  and added some flowers and leaves and some floral printed paper to act as borders. The final touch is some bits of tape with poetry written on it on the white pant legs.
The next spread had a painting of lemons in a bowl on the right - so i created a French feast with cheese and wine. Another image from Marie Claire creates the mood on the left - then i added some grape cluster stickers.  Finally text from a french dictionary accented with wine charms - vin, raisin and fromage!
For this last "half spread" of the month i just found an interesting illustration from my Larouse dictionary - of an assortment of chapeaux! Scraps of paper create the borders.
And finally - i was running out of ideas for the paris theme that had not already been used!
(already used by other artists included Degas, Picasso, Monet, Piaf, Eiffel tower, Moulin Rouge, art nouveau, and Marie Antoniette!)
So i thought i would do some research into the three Louis!  The kings, XIV, XV and XVI and the furniture styles they made famous.  I used a rose coloured toile patterend paper for the background and google images of their portraits and chairs.  I had all sorts of other info about their wives and mistresses, but well - there is only so much you can fit on an altered book spread!

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