Another page done! Denise's on the way!

For the past month I have had just about a half hours worth of work to do on your pages Denise and just never could find the finishing touch. Well I finally did - yahoo! A couple of little birdies just flew in for a visit so now your pages are complete.

I started this first page off by painting some gesso on a piece of canvas and then painting it with acrylic paints mixed with dyes to make it look like the sky in the early morning. Next I picked a few ferns from my front yard, slapped on some green paint and gently pressed them onto the dried canvas. Once completely dried, I hand dyed some pieces of lace that I thought would fit in with the nature-like scene I was trying to create. Rob and I had taken a kayak trip early one morning and saw a couple of swans so I decided to try depict them swimming around the shores of the lake.

For the second page I tried something a bit different. Using the same technique with the gesso and paints, I painted the background the same way to reflect a different time of day. Once the background was dried I proceeded to lay out some threads that I have been collecting for the past year.

Ya'll know how you have a ton of strings hanging off the fabric you just bought and washed? Well I have an old lunch pail on a shelf just above my washing machine and every time I wash fabric I cut off the hanging strings and save them. The lunch pail is full with every color range you can think of! I knew that someday I would use them - here it is - my first attempt.

I spread the strings out to form a tree and branches. then I printed on a piece of silk the words "Friendship is a sheltering tree" and tacked it down on the side of the tree. At first I printed it out using my printer but it just looked to uniform and I wanted it to look more natural. Once that was in place I laid a piece of tulle over the whole project and used some bronze silky thread to outline the tree and the branches and also filled the trunk in a bit. The tulle gives the picture a soft foggy look rather than the bright look of page 1.

Well girls, this time next week I will be sitting on the dock sunning and crazy quilting or trying to catch a grand daddy fish in my kayak. I love going up to the lake and am sure I will get some more inspiration from the beauty of the mountains, lakes and loons. Happy End of the summer girls!