An Art Project and Two Layouts

Things have continued to be rather busy here in backwater North Carolina. Since my last post, I've spent a good bit of my free time stitching, but almost no time scrapbooking. It seems when I'm tired, I will turn to stitching before scrapping... possibly because I like to stand while I scrapbook. And I don't want to share photos of what I was stitching on until I get them into fully finished form.

A few weeks ago, Alton and I visited a folk art show at Fearrington Village. It was an interesting display... and not at all what I was expecting. I thought we would see primitive items, or, I don't know, handmade pottery, quilts, things like that. Instead, for the most part, what we saw brought to mind the decor of a House of Blues venue. There were two vendors, however, who were selling art that they had created by drawing or collaging on vintage pieces of paper. I was these pieces, many of which were quite pretty, and thought, "I could do that." So, I came home, pulled out some vintage sheet music, and got to work. Rather than drawing my own images, I decided to use some of my Unity stamps... Donna Downey co-branded stamps, to be specific. I inked them with two shades of blue Distress ink, and stamped away. I then traced around the edges of my stamped images with a black pen. And then I added a little touch of bling. I'm pretty happy with how they turned out in the end:

and this:

Here they are framed and hung on the wall. Sorry the picture is crappy, but there's never a lot of light in that room. And yes, I know that I need to straighten them up. I'm not positive this will be their final display place, so I'm not fixing the location of the nails until I am certain.

Monday afternoon, I finally felt ready to plunge into my Egypt album for real. So I made my title page. I decided not to include any pictures or ephemera. Instead, it's just a collage of images from one sheet of paper, and it includes little notes about what the trip meant to me, who I was with, and the year. Nothing too fancy.

I added pop dots under some of the elements, and placed some buttons throughout the layout to create some dimension for the project:

And finally, I created a layout last night for the March challenge at the Webster's Pages Inspired! site. This month's challenge was to create a 'shaped' layout. I used the scalloped die cut page from their Spring Market line and piled on the embellies. The picture is one of me in my Easter dress when I was a little, little girl.

Maybe this evening I'll have the inspiration to work on another layout for my Egypt album. Til next time, happy crafting, everyone!