Chris' Imaginary Vacation

Well what a fun theme this was! Chris' book is entitled "My Imaginary Vacation." While others dream of visiting France, Italy and the Mediterranean, my imaginary vacation involves lots of chocolate and Johnny Depp!

I started off with a scrumptuous chocolate truffle background. I decorated some of the truffles with irridescent glitter glue to make them look sugar-coated. Then behind some of the truffles, I created four Johnny Depp pull-outs. I added ribbons and beads to decorate the spine and my work was finished!

My First Inspiration Card

For one of the swaps I am now involved in, we are to create a 4 x 6 card using one of 32 prompts for our inspiration. We only decorate the front side. There are 8 players, so every two weeks, I send one card to someone in the group. In return, I receive a card from a different player every two weeks!

This is my first card. My prompt is "Escaping Into A Good Book." I created this card the other night during an art play date with several friends. Su told me that she decided to create two identical cards--one for the swap and one to keep. At the end of the round, she will have twice as many cards! It was a great suggestion, so I also made two.

Lisa's Marie Antoinette Folder

Our Marie Antoinette folder swap is winding down. The last folder I got to work in was Lisa's. Wow! By the time her folder arrived, it was bursting at the seams! Lisa didn't have a particular theme for her folder. I thought about using pretty soap and perfume labels. There were so many of them, it was difficult to decide which ones to use. I wanted to use them all.

That was when I decided to do a flag pull-out for Lisa's folder. A flag pull-out uses and accordian fold to display several tags (or flags). I covered each tag with a different soap or perfume label--24 in all! They were so colorful and each one a beautiful piece of art in itself. The flag pull-out adds an interactive and visually stunning feature to the spread.

When you first turn to my spread, the accordian folds are closed. To open the accordian fold, you pull the pink ribbon down. There are three accordian folds on each side. I placed images of Marie Antoinette on the background and the text reads "Dans la salle de bain, il y a beaucoup de savons et parfums."

Sox's Nick Bantock AB

I had the privilege of working in Sox's Nick Bantock AB this month (our Honolulu AB RR). I love Nick Bantock's stuff but never really studied him that closely--until now!

I painted my background in rich, Bantock-like colors. Added some strange images, a few postage stamps and a postcard (aged to perfection). I also had a handmade blank book that was decorated with beautiful, exotic postage stamps that fit perfectly with Sox's theme. I secured it into the center of my spread with a variety of orange fibers and beads. Turns out there are orange hues on the cover of the book, so they matched! For the post card stamp on the right side, I took an inspiration card that Sox recently created and reduced it to the size of a postage stamp!