The only energy I have when it is 93 degrees in the shade is to go to Safeway’s Starbucks and get a caramel light frappacino. Then, of course ,  I wander the aisles in air-conditioned comfort hoping they will not notice I am pushing an empty cart.

I was exhausted after doing Crowabout #38. Nancy was sneaky and posted the collage sheet on her photostream and NOT in the Collage Play with Crowabout group on Flickr. I think only 3 of us have posted so far.

Jessica came over last night for *art night*. We each worked on different projects and ate chips and salsa & ice cream from the dairy bar.

I worked on Crowabout #37. Since I wanted to be totally original with my collage I created a kalidescope effect with the floral border that came on the collage sheet. There was also a pig and a flapper gal and a bunch of bird eggs and vintage fruit crate labels. I am sort of hooked on the adhesive gems and went a little psychodelic on this one:

 I cut up all the text from the fruit labels and came up with:

Date Dribble Deluxe A Circle Of Luscious Girl Fruit

I stuck an egg on the Blue Ribbon Berry’s and put that on her tummy. I also put an egg on her head. I had a dress in the image stash (not part of the collage sheet) that I colored with pastels to match the blue sky background.

I think she is Egg-Ceptional.

Don’t you?

Pinkie Taylor was so thrilled with Jenna-Ann she showed it to everyone at the office. Marlene, one of the follow up team, asked me if I’d make one for her grand-daughter. Here is Avery, the summertime fairy. This was a major cut and paste job-since I had two photos to work with. 

Paper used: Wild Saffron (K&Co) for dress and hat, Marah Johnson (Creative Imaginations) background, flowers from scraps of Sasha Collection. A variety of adhesive gems (Darice & Me&My Big Ideas)

12×10 collage.

A co-worker requested a Lady-wing of her youngest daughter, Jenna-Ann whose birthday was May 19th. I suspect that there is some fairy blood in her family, as her girls all love PINK!

I wanted to do a baby Lady-wing and am fortunate that  I found the right one. This is Jenna-Ann who was found under the azaleas all pink and sparkly with her pink diamond tiara and giant baby wings! 

I only had a small photo of her in a swimsuit. I made the dress out of Sasha Collection and the wings from K&Co. The original is 12×12.

Today was so beautiful I just had to get outside and stroll by the magic waterfall. It was so bloody hot though, I thought I was going to faint. I bought some new designer paper and before I went to bed created this collage…

I was invited last week to join a weekly artist’s challenge on Flickr, hosted by Crowabout (aka Nancy Baumiller). The host sends out a collage sheet on Sundays to all members of the group by posting it on Flickr. From there it’s basically a free-for-all; you are allowed to do what ever you want with the images to create a piece of art. You must use at least 3 images to be in the running for the weekly prize. But you are encouraged to use all the images.

The challenge as I see it is to create an original work that uses the images in different and unexpected ways. I was so excited to play I made mine into a real game, based on the old game spinners of yesteryear , that I’ve noticed are finding their way back into vogue. So I put the collage sheet into the collage creator program and separated the spinner base from the other images and enlarged it. I printed the spinner base on card-stock. I then hand colored the spinner base and all the little faces. I made a real spinner out of another image (printed 5x in a row) and cut it out in the shape of a needle spinner. I poked a hole in the center of the base and attached the spinner to the base with a copper brad.

This game was then placed on top of a variety of images from the collage sheet, including the tattoo of a pretty senorita. The senorita I also enlarged and flipped and printed on card-stock. Her blouse is another image of an old box of beef bouillon cubes!

I embellished the senoritas with pencil, ink and gems.

The Crow-about Challenge was lots of fun and took me most of Sunday to complete. I guess I will go outside now and enjoy some of this summer weather!

I used bubbles on some images…

and photo slides on others…..

also pull outs and fold outs

the hard cover was made with card board and masking tape and then wrapped with designer paper and adhesive…

I drilled a screw into the  back cover and inserted some velour yarn to the front cover to bind the book shut cause it is so thick. I trimmed the bottom edge with some leftover trims from the sewing box.

I had started it in November and finished after the Christmas Donner Party snow event.

Unfortunately the story did not all fit on 14 pages–so I will have to do volume two!

The cover was rubber stamped and embossed with black detail powder. It is OOAK and was a wonderful learning experience. Stay posted for Volume Two.

Mother Electra was one of the many vintage images found in the 19th century ephemera stash. I had read an article about making *mini books* and I thought I would give it a whirl. I began by gathering images that would tell the story and then wrote the story to go with the images. I used some of the tricks from the article and added doors, pockets and sliders within the book. The interior pages were designed with a repeat leaf pattern which I embellished with gold ink. Two pages were glued together back to back  and cut into 6″ strips. I created four strips which folded in half and stapled in the center made 16 pages. I knew that a hard cover would eventually conceal pages 1 and 16 so I left those blank.  See Mother Electra’s Pride and Joy for page construction.

I had just taken a crash course on Steampunk culture and was hoping to make a project that would appeal to the more mature Goth and Cyberpunk hipsters who were looking to purchase handcrafted items on Etsy besides watch part jewelry and steampunk goggles. The only literature I found was some Jules Verne-ish capers that could have been written by a 6th grader: no character development, absent POV and too much dialogue about fetish gear made out of copper tubing.

I had my main character, a portly matron in bereavement, recount the tale of her daughter, who meets tragedy through misadventure and a jealous husband. Gasp! Set in New York at the turn of the century this short short story reads like a diary entry and is supported by the images I found in the stash.

I found honey o in another very old magazine from 1953. I will give the detail on construction later as it is too late and my neck hurts really bad. 12×12 collage done in the same way as all the other lady-wings.