For Mandy's Birthday

It was Mandy's 40th birthday this month and Zuzu had the lovely idea of compiling a book for her.

We each made an A5 page decorated both sides any way we wanted - here are my efforts




This is the front of the page - painted lavender then different shades of lavender inks swished across the page - it is paler in real life!

I made a sachet out of paper and filled it with dried lavender from my garden. On a piece of thin tissue paper I painted a butterfly then painted several layers of gold paint around it - and once dry glued it onto and over the edges of the sachet. It looks like a little silk pillow and smells lovely.

I used really thick paint to do the gold pattern to give it lots of texture.

This is the reverse of the above page.



I painted it matt black then whirled lots of thick gold paint onto it and heat dried it to give a nice texture.

The Victorian birthday card print, I enhanced with watercolours - it actually looks better in 'real life', and painted gold around the frame.

It was the first time I have ever done anything like this and it took me several days to do both sides - and allowing for the layers of paint to dry.

I hope she liked it.

Apparently it smelt wonderful when taken out of the packaging - which was just as I had intended

The Theme for November is the colour Green

These are for an ATC swap on Zuzu's forum. We do a different colour each month - and this one is green.

I scanned these into the computer - but I am not keen on scanning as it magnifies the image so that it is bigger than in reality - and so you get a different perspective than you would with the naked eye. The colours are sharper and darker and smoother not 'coloured in' looking as the scan makes them look

I coloured photo paper card with alchohol inks and when dry I stamped on the butterfly image and cut it out.

The backing card is green too although the scan makes it look cream. It
has been stamped, and I have painted colour on the flowers and leaves.

All the edges are painted lime green as a frame - but for some reason the scan hasn't picked up some of them!





For the above I have stamped the butterfly directly onto the card and also the flowers and foliage which I painted as above.

One more to do - might do a totally different medium for that - just waiting for some inspiration to kick in.