Finally Framed

These are a few Prints of a Santa Fe artist I met a couple of summers ago.  Her name is Barbara Bowles. I love her work, but couldn't afford her huge photos printed onto watercolor paper.  So I made do with several greeting cards and framed them in float frames.  I hung them in the bath as I have few areas of wall left in most of the rest of the house!  Besides, I love art in the bathroom!

Layer: Illustration Friday Theme for this Week

What great timing to have this word as a theme for Illustration Fridays' website this week.  After all, the collages I am currently absorbed in are all about layers.  I chose this one that I named "Orange Marmalade" particularly because of the rows of layers nested horizontally down the page.  I love the different textures of the scraps of fabric, bits of paper, and the found objects; like the recycled metallic layer from a bag of oranges.  One word for all this...Yummy!

If you'd like to see other examples from this series go here.

A Passion for Recycling and Collage

Here is my next series of postcard-sized collages.  I even incorporated the metallic foil from the bag that my oranges came in!  Most of the sewing in this series was done before the piece was cut into smaller sections.  In fact, if you follow this blog, you might recognize the several "Winter Frost" themed pieces from a previously posted piece from Illustration Friday here.  I loved the color and texture of the piece, but it had a bit too much of a "scrapbook page" look.  So I incorporated it into my newest collage and separated it into some very interesting pieces.

The following images are the finished pieces with all the stamping and embellishing added.  At this point, I added mats and frames.  Half of this collection is currently hanging in the lobby of my local bank.  I plan to push this technique a bit farther this week.  I will be making some tote bags for my Children's Church Teachers in appreciation for the time they volunteer educating the kids at our church.  I will be using recycled dog food and bird seed bags as a base and fusing an interesting collage on the side panels.  I'll keep you posted.

This is from the previous Illustration Friday projects here

Valentine Collages

I read about this technique to use up scraps of paper and cloth and bits of recycled ephemera.  I decided to jump in head first to really get my hands dirty in this fascinating genre called mixed media collage.  Wow!  I think I've opened a sort of Pandora's Box!  I am completely addicted.  In fact, just two days after finishing my "Valentines", I started a whole new series with even more recycled materials and I love it!  In fact, I've framed 7 of them and my local bank hung them in their lobby.  I believe it is time to enter the world of Etsy.

This is where I started cutting my large sheet into postcard sized collages

A close up of one of the postcards before I added embellishments

Let the sewing, stamping, and embellishing begin!

All ready to iron on the backing fabric

Examples of the finished Valentine postcards