Garden Fairy

When I was looking for something else the other day, I found this piece that I did last year. 4 friends tried a challenge where we had a month to make a small journal quilt/piece following a technique/theme/use of a product - each of us had a go at suggesting the following month's theme. This was the result of the first challenge - we were required to use some grungeboard, and my self-imposed theme for my pages (to help me focus) was "Beauty in the Garden". The following are some of my notes from that time.
TECHNIQUES : Fabric paper a la Beryl Taylor. The wings and heart are grungeboard - heart painted with pebeo shimmer light copper, edged with gold krylon pen, then curved metal heart shape sewn by hand on top (no problem with sewing thru the grungeboard). Wings painted with lumiere metallic gold, then a layer of glitter glue, and the addition of feathers underneath.

CHALLENGES : I think working from the 'Angel in the garden' project in Beryl Taylor's book "Mixed Media Explorations" made it harder -- it raised my expectations of what I wanted, and made it more complicated than my first page probably needed to be. Grungeboard - great to use, can see specific advantages of it now...but once painted (both sides on wings in case could see back of them when attached) was impossible to glue to. Used unfeasibly strong double-sided tape for the feathers! Ended up stitching the wings by machine to the background (which was no problem), and then gluing the angel over the top and onto background. Face -- I had a big block for a while over how I would do the face/head cos I didn't think I'd be happy with anything I drew myself. In the end I printed an artistic face and then glued cream tissue over to give it a similar feel to the rest of the papers. I still wasn't happy cos it looked too flat. Lovely husband suggested embellishing the hair with some flowers, and from that I ended up attaching the dried pansies in place of the hair. I now love that.
LEARNINGS : It is darkest before the dawn! When you block/can't see the way on a project, you just have to keep thinking, and giving it some time, and asking what others think - the end result is often better than your first expectation, and may be completely unimagined. When in doubt...embellish ;-)
SUCCESSES : The fabric paper : I really enjoyed this process, and learned lots from it. My colour is all from using coloured tissue as the last layer (not adding any paint). Will definitely do more of this. Haven't neatened the sides of this page yet....may back it with my purple fabric paper, embellished in some way (but that will be later - not this month!) Grungeboard is usefully stitched by hand or machine and is quite nice to hold dimension on a piece - my wings are up off the page which lets the feathers be free too. And I would probably have it still lying in my drawer untried if not for this project...

Well - those notes were from March 2009 - and the day before yesterday I re-discovered it, and decided I still didn't like it without background stitching. It now has a felt backing, and my swirly free-hand machine stitching that is one of my fav's - and I feel so much better....if only I could have spent that 15 mins 18 months ago - I could have felt better, sooner!!