Happy Birthday with Wings

Adding wings again!  I do love these transparent wings from Tim Holtz.  The background is an image transfer of a mushroom onto some graph paper.  I did not remove every bit of the transfer material because the image starting pulling away.  It gives the image a kind of misty look that I don't mind.  Next time I will stick the paper down before sewing - the project got a little 'puckery' when I sewed the elements together.  I had to do a little surgery with an Xacto knife and some glue.

I do love red and white mushrooms.  My Swiss grandfather would make concrete mushroom shapes and paint them red with white polka dots for our garden.  They gave our yard a very magical quality!

Washi Tape Wonderful

One of the mixed media exercises in the latest Somerset Studio Mixed Media magazine was to cover a panel in washi tape and then paint over it with gesso and then add layers of acrylic paint on top.

On my first try, I covered the panel with all of the bright washi tapes I had and found I couldn't bear to cover it with gesso!  I just loved it on it's own and didn't want to tone it down at all.

So I made the panel into a bright and cheerful birthday card for my niece.

Most of the washi tape is from the Mary Engelbreit collection and so the card came together easily with a vibrant red heart and some bright yellow rick-rack for an embellishment.

I am really loving the new format for Somerset Studio's magazine, there are many pages with projects to try on your own.  I am going to do a new panel with subdued washi tapes and then try the gesso and paint.  I'll let you know what happens!