Lemon Tree Tales

Art Journal: My page from Laurie

I'm so excited to show you my first page received from my friends for my book. The theme I selected is "dragonfly" because they're such gorgeous insects and come in all sorts of colors. This is the page that Laurie made for me. I love it, the colors are so rich and remind me a bit of her rich color selections. The dragonfly is 3D and is made in the style of Mr. Finch.

and a closeup of that gorgeous dragonfly

The background is a subtly stamped in shades of green to give added dimension to the tea-dyed canvas. It's so beautiful. Thank you Laurie!

Art Journal: Laurie page finished

Saturday I had Laurie and Valerie over for an art day. I wasn't quite finished with Laurie's page so I worked on the last minute details while we visited together. Both Laurie and Valerie were happy with their pages so I'm very glad. Daisy is still on the mend from an illness so I'll have to give her page at another time.

Laurie's theme was "girlfriends" so I wanted to make 3D fabric "paper dolls" of the four of us. Well, they're a lot more svelte than we are in real life but I figured that these could be the more fashionable versions of us. Other than a passing nod to similar hair colors and favorite colors for our dresses that's the closest to any resemblances. If you remember from a couple months ago, Laurie's background wasn't my favorite at first. It went through many steps and many layers of fabric spray paint, stamps, inks and stencils before I decided that I liked it. Now it's perhaps my favorite because of the richness of subtle colors.

 

A closer look at the four figures. The flowers are ribbon roses woven on a spider web stitch. The hair are a variety of Tibetan lambswool and a generic "wool" doll hair.

 

A closer look at the friendship quote that I rubber stamped on fabric. I also added a dyed doily, beads, buttons, and of course the alcohol ink painted metal dragonfly that all the pages received.

 

Now I need to work on my page but first I'll have to show you the beautiful page that Laurie gave me. And in other news, Fiona is recovering nicely from her spaying last week. She's not too happy to have restricted play time and more crate time. But at least her incision is healing nicely.

Art Journal: Daisy page completed

Just a few added embellishments and now Daisy's page is finished. Somehow everything looks nice and cheerful when beads are there.

 A closeup at the fabric "paperdoll" ... the fabric gives it a nice warmth that you just don't get with paper. Of course the pink glitter edges add just the right touch of sparkle.

 

And a closeup of the friendship quote that I stamped on fabric.

And of course the little alcohol ink painted metal dragonfly that I also added to all of the pages.

Fiona went to the vet

Yesterday Fiona had an appointment to get spayed at the vet's office. This morning I brought her home for some quiet and rest while she recovers. She did well but the poor thing has a very shaved tummy and a front leg where they had the IV inserted. She may not like it but she's going to be getting lots of crate time over the next few days to give her incision time to heal. Next week she'll be 8 months old. My goodness how the time is just flying by.

Here's a picture of her from a couple months ago after she visited the groomer for a quick bath (she was so stinky from all the romping around in the bushes). Needless to say she didn't like the experience and really hated that little pink bow. If you look closely you can see the pout.

Art Journal: Valerie page completed

Ta da! Valerie's art journal page is now finished. She requested a theme of English cottage gardens and pictured silk ribbon embroidered flowers. This is what I came up with.

The first thing I did was to look around the web for images of English cottage gardens. I wasn't happy until I found this absolutely gorgeous photograph of Di Van Diekerk's silk ribbon work. She's an artist from South Africa and is so very talented ... go check out her work here. She's written some amazing books that I should order because I'd love to learn how to do this one day. In the meantime I reworked the photograph into the warm colors that Valerie loves and printed it on inkjet prepared fabric. Most English cottage gardens are done in purples and pinks and some of those colors still show through.

I did want a bit of silk so I took so hand dyed silk fabric, tore it in strips and made roses using the spider web rose technique on a scrap piece of muslin. I then cut them out and stitched them to the canvas on a layer of some dyed cheesecloth that I had in the scrap bin.

I also wanted to have a 3D fabric "paperdoll" so I made a fairy ... cotton fused to a timtex that's layered, dressed with petals from vintage millinery flowers, edges covered with orange glitter, and a hand drawn face using colored pencils and micron pens. Her hair is a bit of Tibetan lambswool. Her wings are cut from fused Angelina fibers with a glitter outline.

The same quote that I used on Daisy's page is also here, stamped on yellow quilter's cotton and embellished with rhinestones.

The final step was to embellish with random sprinkles of beads, flowers, a glitzy yellow butterfly and a metal dragonfly that was painted with alcohol inks. This was so much fun to do. I can't wait to see my friends this weekend to exchange our pages. More to come later this week.