13 Days of Christmas art exchange - Days 5 and 6

Day 5 of our Christmas exchange brought a wonderful cone ornament from my friend Patti G!  I've known Patti for many years through online art exchanges and her creations are always gorgeous and meticulous!!  I just LOVE how Patti created the cloth for this piece.  She incorporated fibers, ribbons, sheet music cheese cloth, batting and a beautiful vintage photo and free motioned stitched to secure it all then embellished with lace, pearl beading and a pretty glistening flower.  It will hang from beautiful lace and ribbon!  She included an additional gift as well!  Thank you sweet Patti - this is special and will adorn my tree along with your other ornament from a few years ago!!

Look how beautiful the fabric, stitching and embellishments are!

 ~ Day 6 ~

Day 6 brought a delightful gift from Martha B!!  Martha is from Canada and I have long admired her artwork over the years and was thrilled when I realized she was participating in this exchange!  This morning I opened up her precious little package to find a beautiful glass heart with the most perfect of Christmas sentiments on the front and back!  Take a look: 

13 Days of Christmas art exchange - Days 3 and 4

       
Day 3 of our Christmas art exchange brought a gorgeous tussie mussie from our hostess with the mostest, Elizabeth Woodford!  E and I go back many years exchanging art through online groups and we have enjoyed meeting each other as well.  I have watched her talent just take off and now she is teaching such wonderful classes in her home state.  She has become well known for her fabulous sun prints and hand dyed fabric, so I was thrilled when I opened her package to find a beautiful christmas cone ornament that she made with vintage damask from old table cloths that she hand dyed and sun printed!  Her beautiful cone is lined with a gorgeous velvet trimmed with lace and buttons - my favorite things!  She has silver trim adorned with beautiful clear crystal beads, I love how she has sewn on the buttons in a cluster at the top.  She filled the cone with candy canes and mints.  Thank you E, it is gorgeous and I love having something that you created!!  To see more of Elizabeth's creatiions go here!!

~ Day 4 ~

Day 4 brought a wonderfully whimsical ornament by Leslie Brier!  The little cup holds the most adorable scene of vintage stickers of snowmen and bells, a gllittery bottle brush Christmas tree and the most pretty tiny glass balls and jingle bells - and it glitters beautiful when the sun hits it!  Thank you Leslie!

                                            

13 Days of Christmas art exchange - Days 1 and 2

This year I am participating in a 13 Days of Christmas art exchange with 12 other so very talented artists.  It has been so much fun opening up these beautifully wrapped and crafted gifts and I wanted to share them with you as well!
Day #1 is from Barbara Burkard.  Barb's wrapping was scrumptious with a hint of the loveliness inside!!

 

        

Inside was a magical snowman ornament in a clear glass globe - Barbara had such a beautiful photo of it on her blog - so much better than I could photograph - this photo is courtesy of Barbara Burkhard ~ and in addition to this most beautiful ornie, she made a gorgeous fabric cuff with all my favorite vintage embellishments ~ beautiful lace, buttons and pretty snow flakes!  Thank you so much Barbara, I love it all!!

Day #2 is Moi ~ I made a collage inside a watch case using one of my most favorite image of two little girls with angel wings.  I added a couple of stars one of gold thread and one sequin and "Peace on Earth".  It is topped with a lacey ribbon baub and pearl on top with a velvet ribbon to hang.  On the outside of the back I used alcohol ink to marbleize and used a "joy" stamp to finish off.  To package these, I used paper bags I put through my printer and added a little glitter bling for day 2.  Leslie Brier has a wonderful photo of the back of my ornament on her blog if you'd like to see here!!

   

Miniature Books! Love 'em!

Sharing some miniature books that I've made this past month.  Once I got started, it's hard to stop with all the various shapes and sizes - a number of these were done with one piece of 12 x 12 paper cut and folded.

              

The 2 smallest of the group are 1 1/2 x 2 inches and are star books.  I've used vintage photos some from Vintage Image Madness - love those Playful Piernot images - on many of the books and the star book has old family photos, so is particularly special to me.  Star book:

 

Here is the star book open:

I started making the mini books for Lenna's mini book swap and decided to make a variety of shapes and sizes, the largest being  4 x 3 - I'll share that in another post.  Now I have to decide which books to choose to send to Lenna to swap out!  I may list one or more on Etsy, we'll see!  Thanks for checking them out!

Vintage Note Cards for Lenna's swap

I haven't been in a swap for awhile, but my friend, Lenna was holding a Vintage Note Card swap and I couldn't resist to get back to some paper cutting!

I decided to dust some stamps off and use glossy paper and permanent ink to create the photo-like look.  This was done with black india ink.

On this card, I used one of the graphics that Lenna included in her PDF instructions.  I printed out and mounted on bookboard and used inks to colorize it!

This is the same stamp as above but artist brown permanent ink
was used for a more sepia-tone look.

and with this lovely lady once again, I printed on glossy card stock and colorized with inks.










These will be making their way to Lenna early this week!  Looking forward to seeing my returns as there are many wonderful artists in this swap!  Thanks for looking!