More Swaps!

I joined quite a few swaps and deco round robins that were due this past week, so I have been busy finishing them as well as working nine out the past ten school days! First up was completing a recipe swap for Milliande's Creativity Club. Since I live in the Southwest I felt a salsa recipe was appropriate for this international group. I am looking forward to receiving an interesting set of recipes! If you cannot read the recipe and are interested, email me and I would be delighted to share! penney.klaproth@cox.net

Several decos were due to be mailed by the beginning of this month for Marine Decos. I participated in the Seahorse, Whale, and Mermaid swaps. Since leaving teaching full time and a severe drop in income I have been challenging myself to use as many supplies as I can find in my mini-Michael's store at my house. LOL I purchased very few items for making these decos and found it satisfying to create on a budget. The seahorse deco was made with stickers (no seahorse stamp:(), rick rack, a beautiful ceramic tile purchased at Art Unraveled (from Sacred Heart Art), rhinestones, a page from National Geographic, and hand painted seaweed.

I love the way my whale deco turned out! After scouring Joann's for stamp, stickers, etc. of whales I found this absolutely perfect fabric of ocean waves. I had black and white fabric left from my huge background swap so I enlarged and traced an orca whale pic from the internet then appliqued the pieces to the ocean background.

This is a fun (and weird!) collage done for a Masterpieces Unmasked round robin book for Pam over at Bad Baby Art group. I have always loved playing games and as a youngster Masterpiece was a favorite, although you needed 3 to play (just like Clue which is another favorite) so I didn't play as often as I liked. Pam has taken the art cards from the game and we were to "unmask" the artist. I chose "American Gothic" by Grant Wood. I took his serious painting and added antlers, monkey face, etc. to make it look bizarre. I then collaged synonyms for "american" and "gothic" to the top. It makes me giggle when I look at how the farmer and his wife are so crazy looking!

My final Marine Deco: mermaid. It's difficult to get the full effect of the Twinkling H2Os I used to paint the mermaid stamp (Judikins), but her "skin" is painted in Golden's acrylic Interference Green to give her just a hint of "fishy" skin. Again I used the Nat Geo pics and rhinestones for bubbles. The background is one of my favorite painting techniques using Golden Heavy Body Acrylics.