Whodunnit

This is so far my favorite page because of it's tongue-in-cheek-character. When I stumbled upon the foto of these two kids, one looking slightly rebellious, the other one very mischievous, I could not help but think of my three kids when they were that age. Whatever happened, the question of who did it was always answered by "not me", "don't know", "wasn't here", "nobody" or "who did WHAT???" It took several years before those kids (we called them the other kids, those that were always lurking under the table or just around the corner) left the house.

Baby quilt

At least a change from the book pages! This is a quilt I made by order from a colleague of mine for a little baby girl.
Within the next three months I will have to make two more baby quilts, one for a boy, one for a girl, since two of my colleagues are going to have a baby. With scans being as advanced as today both can be sure of the baby's gender. It is absolutely fascinating: one of them even had a video of her unborn she could watch at the computer, looking at him grinning and sucking his thumb! When I was expecting my children you could not understand what the scan was showing without your doctor pointing details out to you.
I love watching those two - they could be my daughters, and it is so nice seeing them together discussing the progress of their pregnancy and showing pictures to each other....
Don't get me wrong - I really would not like to become a grandmother yet!

Afraid to repeat myself: More pages...

New background

Since my two very large sheets will not be sufficient for 26 pages I made a new background. This one is very lightly colored and evoces feelings of spring and cheeriness.
With these pages a development sets in which is quite similar to the one I experienced with AMCs and ATCs: There is no limit to experimentation at all. Even if one of these pages would go horribly wrong - so what? It is a piece of paper 4 x 8 inches, and I have been working on it for what? 1/2 hour or 1 hour maximum. Write it off as a learning experience, no harm done. So far, I was lucky. There were some small mistakes that could be mended, some things I will have to keep in mind as for instance not to take a heat gun to a page that was painted with acrylic paints - they blister!

Still 20 to go!

Further pages

While it took me quite a long time deliberating what to do with my first pages ideas now keep popping up. Quite a lot of "what if's" are taking place, too. And what I absolutely love is making the background for the pages. I keep experimenting with gesso, acrylic colors, watercolors, and intersting things like distress ink spray and salt.

Back page

For several days I have been racking my head for an idea how to decorate the back pages for the skinny book. It had to have general information such as name, address etc. and perhaps a personal accent as well. I did not want it to be too selfconcious, rather a little humorous or funny. Now I did something a little crazy. I inserted my face into Botticellis famous Venus - she may be 20 kilos lighter and 30 years younger than me, but my hair is red, too, and my skin is very white... For the general information I made a tag from one of my cards and inserted that into a small pocket.

Skinny book - first pages

These are the first two pages I made for the skinny book swap. I was not exactly looking for a theme but rather trying to meet the images to the mood of the background. Every page has to be an original - and there are to be 26 of them! So the last few days I have been browsing through my stash of fotos and transparencies as well as small charms in order to decide what to put on my pages. It is not easy for me, since collage is something I never did so far. But I like these first pages, they seem to have some kind of atmosphere. The left 1 1/2 inches have to be free from embellishments since that is the part where the book is to be bound.

Skinny book

This is a new field for me. I am going to participate in an exchange for a skinny book (measurements 4 x 8") as decribed in the last issue of Cloth, Paper, Scissor. So for the last days I have been working on my backgrounds with gesso, acrylic paints, watercolor, stamping and metallic paints. By now I am quite satisfied with the results and will now raid my stashes of embellishments, stamps and other paraphernalia to decorate my pages with. Since there are 25 pages to make this will keep me quite busy, I suppose.

Fabric book

This fabric book was made during a class with Christa Rolf. It is based on a short poem by A. Schnitt called "Im Wechselspiel der Gezeiten" (the play of alternating tides). I especially like the small envelope containing a seashell.

Joi de vivre

I made this small wall quilt as a birthday present for my aunt. She is a very outgoing and enthusiastic person which is why I chose very cheery fabric. Everything is freecut and later machine quilted. My aunt was quite happy with it and told me that she changed the decoration of her "wintergarten" in order to fit the wall quilt in. She is one hell of a person to gift with quilts: When presented with a large quilt at her 70th birthday she had a whole room refurnished and redecorated around this quilts and its colors....

Trip to Scotland

This years trip took us to Scotland. BBC informed us that this has been the wettest summer since 1914, and we cannot contradict that. But it made for really good fotos! Rains over the lochs, whirling mists around tombstones and ruins - very impressive.