Art frenzy

Well, I took a much needed break from cleaning the art studio to do some art! Boy, did I need a fix in a bad way! Even though I SWORE I was not joining in anymore swaps, when a Bird themed LFB (little fat book) was proposed with the diva's, I knew there was no way I could resist. I LOVE birds and they are my favorite thing to paint. My intention was to do some new birds to include in the book but I simply haven't had time to focus. And watercolor painting requires focus like nothing else I do when it comes to creating. The fat book pages are due the first week of April and the due date has been looming over me like a dark cloud. I not only signed up for a page in this book, I signed up for 2! And for those of you who don't know what this means, when you sign up to do a page in a LFB, you do one page DESIGN but make enough pages for every person in the swap! In this case, it is 29! Quality copies with embellishments were accepted in this particular swap but try as I might, I can't seem to wrap my brain around the copies. It was more mental work to try and figure out what a background would be, what elements would be copied, cut out and then glued on, and then what the embellishment would be than if I just make all the pages originals, which is what I'm doing. So, as we take into account the front and back or two page designs, that means 4 x 29= 116... yes, that's right... 116 pages that are 4x4 inches in size. I must've lost my marbles somewhere.... Anyway, I'm working on them. My kids are out of school for spring break next week which really doesn't play well into my art plan! I've been like a mad woman working on the back and front of the first page yesterday and today. I have all of side one finished and side two is almost finished. The sides of the other page are still in process of design in my head. Since I was bent... and still am, on using all my own bird images, I'm printing them out from photos of my paintings that are in my computer. Here is side one of the first page:

Some of the elements don't show up well in the photo but here is what I did. The cardstock base is painted an antique metallic gold. The rest of the piece was done separately with layers of deep plum fabric, gold sheer, and some other varigated fabric. It was placed under that matte photocopy of the bird painting close up. I sewed the image to the fabric and then highlighted the "window" with gold thread. Then the whole piece was sewn the the cardstock. This original painting is hanging in my house and is quite large. It is titled "Through the window".

Here is the back of the page:

For this page, I used 4 different colors of ink directly onto the cardstock. Then I stamped the oriental text. Next I went over the whole piece with a light wash of gesso with a tiny bit of water using a dried up baby wipe to spread it. The chick image is a close up of a painting I did last year that was put into an altered book in a Circle Journal Round Robin. I printed the image on a transparency and then adhered it onto a light golden yellow cardstock to put back some of the original color lost in printing onto the transparency. I cut the images into the size I needed and then sewed them onto the page with french knots. I LOVE doing french knots! The back of the page is the signature page so, before I adhered the transparency to the cardstock, I wrote my name, city, and state so it shows through the transparency. The pages look slightly off centered because they are! Room has to be left on the binding side of the pages. When all my pages are finished, I'll be mailing them out to the hostess, Kathy McElroy, who will then swap out all the pages with all those from other participants and then coil bind the books and send them back to everyone! While working on this, part of my craziness has come in the fact that I have too many ideas. I think I need to do some more painting of birds and create my own bird book of all my images. That would be fun to do. Now, this is my only swap I'm doing this year because I detest mass producing anything. I swore I wouldn't do this again but the subject was too tempting. I think I'll be pleased as punch about the end product! OK, back to work....