Let Them Eat Cake!

I had my concept for this AB themed "All" for quite some time.  The phrases "Let them eat cake," "You can't have your cake and eat it too" and "you can have it all"  kept swirling around in my head.  I also knew that I was going to make a multi-tiered pop-up cake inspired by Marie Antoinette.  I pulled out all of my turquoise blue and pink trims and had lots of fun decorating my cake.  This is how it all came together.

Avid Diva

This is a spread I did in an AB whose theme is "WordPlay."  My spread was initially inspired by this illustration.  I then envisioned creating her hair made up from "strands" cut from the pages that had been removed from the book itself.  To tie the book's theme in with this image, I decided to have her recite a series of palindromes.  I used a wheel mechanism to allow her to say several different palindromes, including:

Kay, a red nude, peeped under a yak

  A slut nixes sex in Tulsa

  Amore, Roma

 Dammit, I’m mad!

  Desserts, I stressed!

 In words, alas, drown I

  Murder for a jar of red rum

 Oh no! Don Ho!

 Rats at a bar grab at a star

 Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas!

 Senile felines

 Won’t lovers revolt now?

Now you understand why I call this spread "Avid Diva!"

Body Part Chunkies

For this month's chunky challenge, we had to pick a body part and incorporate it into our pages.  I chose mouths/lips and decided to showcase them by creating a window.  Can't wait to see what body parts the other players will feature...

Origins of Man

OK, I sort of cheated with this month's spread in this Origins of Man book.  Her theme really stumped me and I was quickly running out of time to finish her book.  Thankfully, the monthly challenge in the on-line class I am taking with Lisa Vollrath gave me an idea!  She wanted us to incorporate a folded page into a spread.  The idea is for the folded page to "hide" an element that is later revealed when you turn it.

Inspired by words from (of all things) a Barbra Streisand song, I ended up with a tongue-in-cheek interpretation of the sperm and the egg.  The first page (folded on the right) reads "eye on the target and..."  When you turn the folded page, a "surprise" is revealed--WHAM!

It may be a little hard to see in these pictures, but I used a glue gun to create the sperm and was quite happy with how they turned out.  The egg was created from a piece of tyvek that I heated and spray painted purple.  When I showed my finished spread to my husband, he was embarrassed for me to present this book at the monthly meeting.  I admit that I was more than a little nervous to post pictures on-line and have Lisa critique my piece for the class.  Luckily, she found the humor in my work and that gave me a huge sigh of relief.  Now we will have to wait and see if the book's owner shares my sense of humor!

Hearts Made With Love

Pam and I collaborated to make these door hanger hearts for mutual friends who had recently both lost their mothers.  

I first saw these hearts when my mother-in-law passed away in hospice.  The staff quietly left our family to spend some time alone with her.   When we emerged from her room, I found these fabric hearts hanging from the door knob.  A quote was suspended from the heart that read "May this heart, made with love, bless the one receiving it.  May you feel the strength, courage and peace it sends."  It was a small gesture that touched me greatly.  

To make these hearts for our friends, we selected papers in colors and materials that their moms would have loved.  Pam had photos of both moms which we cut and glued into the center of the hearts.  We strung coordinating beads and a quote that read "May absolute peace gently descend" onto a piece of ribbon.  These hearts are a beautiful way to remember loved ones we have lost.