Art Sisters - AOTM

This is the second month I joined in on the Art Sisters Yahoo Group's Art of the Month concept and I was extremely challenged this month. I was to create a piece of art to send to Karin and her preference in colours is 'purple, deep red, blue, lilac, most colours except brown' and her likes are 'quirky/odd, 'grungy', texture, colour' ... well of course I love grungy, texture and colour, so that part was easy ... but no brown?? everything I do has brown on it ... so it was kind of fun to have a go at doing grungy without using brown.

So here are some photos of the wall hanging I made for Karin ... again I used Jen Crossley's pre-cut chipboard frames (did I tell you I just love these). I started by sticking down a serviette (which happened to be a dark pink colour), next I added 3 different colours of paint with a brayer - first MM Shopping Bag, then Golden Raw Sienna and finally Red Oxide. I stamped over the whole frame in black Stazon then added Gold and Patina rub 'n' buff around the edges, finishing with a two step crackle medium. When that was dry I went over the whole frame with Slate coloured Alcohol Inks.

The image was stamped on a transparency and behind it is cheese cloth coloured with glimmer mists that I stuck onto patterned paper that looked like the alphabet a child would write in their school book. I then used a 3-hole pamphlet stitch that I learned through Dorothy Simpson Krause's book on Book + Art as a decorative border across the bottom and to create the hanger at the top. To finish off I added a rusty old key, an old fuse (that I bought off Jen Crossley) and a rusty bottle cap that fit a clock face in perfectly.

Jo Wholohan sent me the most wonderful handmade hand-painted doll, that I will just treasure ... it's just beautiful and admire those that can create such beautiful objects from scratch.

Jo's doll on a log in front of our chiminea.

Here's how big the doll is, it sits in my hand nicely.

"People who say that life is not worthwhile are really saying that they themselves have no personal goals which are worthwhile. Get yourself a goal worth working for. Better still, get yourself a project. Always have something ahead of you to look forward to...to work for and hope for."
~Dr. Maxwell Maltz, Author of Psycho-Cybernetics~