More MAMMA challenges

Here are the three ATCs I made for the last three MAMMA challenges.

Theme: Birds - I decided to use the plain old pigeon and sit him on the steps of St Pauls Catherdral in London. I used a background print of St Pauls and overlaid some of the words of the song 'Feed The Birds' from the film Mary Poppins (one of my all time faves!) by packing tape transfer method. The old pigeon has been printed, cut out and glossy accented .... wonder if he got any food!

Theme: Triptych (the Cambridge dictionary defintion is "a piece of art made of three paintings connected to each other in a way that allows the two outer ones to fold in towards the larger central one" - saves me the trouble of trying to explain what one is! I called this one 'Wartime Waifs' and used some old corrugated cardboard which I tore random parts away from to create a distress look. On the central inside panel I also cut out a recess square which I was going to place a picture in, but that didn't work. I coloured the whole thing with some acrylic paint and distress inks and also used some distress embossing powder which gave a nice, rusty, aged effect. I attached some pictures of wartime children and added a couple of tags (again distressed by creasing and inking)with string.

Theme: Zettiology If you don't know what this is (and I didn't until recently it's... well... weird! There is a group on Flickr dedicated to this which may explain all. So my ATC which I've called 'Dressed To Impress' is my weird, but pretty zetti creation. It started off with a stripey heart shaped piece of handmade paper which I tweaked a bit with the scissors to create a curvy shape, then I decorated the base card with a lot of stripes and wavey shapes using some Sharpie pens. I stuck on the heart, painted a face and neck and drew in the facial details with the pens again (highlighted with bit of Stickles). The final touch with a hat (which was part of the heart I cut off from the body). Zetti is not really my thing, but I did enjoy making this one nonetheless.

Jigsaw Jam Swaps

I've recently been taking part in two separate Jigsaw Jam Swaps (on New Inspirations Yahoo group) - so had my work cut out since I needed to alter a total of 10 pieces for other people. (If you want to know more about the concept have a look at this page.

I've now finally finished all the pieces I've been sent and must say that I've thoroughly enjoyed altering them all - even though it is a bit of a worry since you're altering something for someone else and you want to make sure your own piece will fit in with all the others - but you don't know what all the others will be like - scary but challenging!

All the pieces I've done I've put onto my Flickr photostream which may be accessed via the link on this page (see box on first page). I've chosen to blog about my favourite 4 pieces - so starting here with the piece for Carol.

Carol's theme was a 'Vintage Christmas' using colours red and gold. The background to this one had quite a few different applications - white acrylic paint, gold perfect pearls, metallic rubs ons (in various shades of gold). To create a peeling paint look I then applied some vaseline randomly and painted over with some red acrylic. Once that was dry, I then rubbed some of the paint off (where the vaseline had been applied). I stuck the vintage imagine on and some open weave gold fabric. I used a cardboard heart (coloured with red ink and more metallic rub ons) to link in with the heart the little girl in the image is holding. I threaded some gold coloured beads onto some wire and looped it around the heart and down to the bottom of the piece ending with a little metal gold heart charm. At the top are some pieces of thin wood with tape image transferred words 'Spirit of Christmas'. These transfers weren't a complete success since they've buckled slightly, probably because I coated them with some glossy accents which may have been too heavy. However, the words are still legible and add a bit of dimension to the piece. I hope Carol likes it.