The "Ooh-La-La Mailbag"

Darrell's "Ooh-La-La Mailbag" book asked us to go postal!  Stamps, postcards, letters, catalogs...anything goes!  I chose to put all that junk mail to use in my spread.  What fun!!  I had seen paper beads made from rolled magazine pages.  I adapted that concept to create the background seen here by tightly rolling strips of magazine pages about 2 inches wide by 10 inches long.  You never know exactly what your finished tube will look like, but I tried to use pages that were full of color.

Next, I glued those tightly rolled tubes right onto the page to create my background.  I finished my spread by spelling out "What's in your mailbag?" in die cut letters.  I needed to find a way to make the letters stand out against the busy background.  Instead of using catalog pages again, I cut the letters out of white cardstock and painted them red for maximum visibility.  

Abundance

For the past few years, I have selected a word to focus on for the new year.  My word for 2013 is Abundance.  It has been on my mind a lot lately...guess that's why I decided to create a spread in Cindy's AB around it. 

To try something different, I randomly selected three colors off of a list and used that as my palette:  Apricot, Burgundy and Violet.  OK, so I didn't have the exact colors, but you get the idea.  I am also having fun playing with my new Artistcellar stencils (thank you, Lisa!).  Here I used "Seafoam" (burgundy), "Mini Chicken Wire" (violet) and "Boy Genius" (bronze) on my apricot background.  For added texture, I employed the pulled paper technique.  I simply took strips of book pages (torn out of a book used in an AB round) and glued the strips down randomly.  After a few minutes, I pulled up the strips of paper.  Depending on how long you wait, parts of the pages stick to the background creating this "graffiti-like" effect.  I finished my spread by stamping ABUNDANCE across the pages.

The Story of Inez

Corinne's book is a family scrapbook of sorts and artists are invited to add to the story of the people already in this family album.  I had a few old photographs and wanted to find a way to incorporate them into Corinne's book.

I was drawn to a photo of a little girl that was already in the book.  I decided she would be Inez at the age of 4.  

Inez, age 4

Since the pocket behind her photo was empty, I decided to create a pocket accordian book to house the other photos I was going to use in my spread and to tell the story of Inez.

Envelope accordian book

Front of envelope accordian book

The first photo in the accordian book is a baby picture (given to me by a friend who found this baby photo at an antique sale).  I imagined Inez an orphan.  

This is believed to be the earliest picture of her.

As Inez grew into a beautiful young lady (this is an old postcard from 1917), she was often found in the company of men.  

As a young lady, she enjoyed the company of men.

As she got older,

a dark side of Inez began to emerge.

This photo is actually a lenticular sticker, so the face changes as you tilt the image.

And by age 30, Inez had gone completely mad.  Here, I sliced up an old photo to show a split personality, a shattered mind. 

By age 30, she slipped into complete madness.

 OK, I admit, the story line I came up with is rather dark, but given the only old photos I had, I thought Inez made for a pretty interesting relative!

Mixed Media Play

Look what you can do with a 5 x 5 canvas, a little red acrylic paint, a heart-shaped die cut, a rubber stamp, perfect pearls in bronze, a sheet of music, vellum, gold joss paper, bubble wrap, bronze lumiere paint, red glitter glue and gold shimmer spray.  Valentine's Day is just around the corner...

Playing with Artistcellar Stencils

I haven't really used stencils in my art work before, so this month's chunky page theme was something new for me.  My dear friend, Lisa, generously gave me a "Venice" stencil which her company, Artistcellar, carries.  Who knew the canals of Venice would make such a stunning graphic?  I played with metallic purple and gold spray inks (which are the colors of Carnevale di Venezia).  The stencil is 8.5" x 11", so I was able to make my chunky pages two-sided by cutting two 8 x 4" strips and folding them in half.  But I still felt that my pages were missing something...That's when I came up with the idea to use the Comedy/Tragedy masks to decorate my pages. 

Paper Feathers

I absolutely LOVED doing this little project!  I had seen these paper feathers made out of old hymnal pages on Pinterest and just had to give them a try!  I think they make a nice gift.  You could use all kinds of different papers for your feathers.  Imagine foreign text, colorful comic book pages, leftover wrapping paper, pretty scrapbook papers--the possibilities are endless!  Since I made these feathers with hymnal pages, I plan to give them to the members of my mother's choir group for Christmas.

Fifty Shades of Grey

 

I had so much fun experimenting with the bargello technique as I worked in Amy's book this month.  Her book does not have a theme, so it allowed me to play with this idea I've had for awhile.  Playing off the title of E.L. James' best selling book "Fifty Shades of Grey," I began to pull all my pretty black, white and grey papers.  I used the bargello technique to showcase all of the pretty shades of grey.  I hope Amy likes it as much as I do!