Pretty Ballerina - Paper Doll

This month's theme over on the Yahoo group Fantastic Flat Paperdolls is 'Ballet' and I made this pretty ballerina for my swap partner. Hope she'll like it!

Another Distressed Gesso Background

This ATC I made is for a Yahoo group I'm in (New Inspirations) and is for this month's lottery. I had to choose this month's theme as I was lucky enough to win last month's lottery ATCs (vintage children). I picked 'Musicals - past or present' as the theme and I decided to base my ATC around 'My Fair Lady' with the luvverly Eliza doolittle - one of my favourite musical films.

The background is torn pieces of musical score, then layers of gesso and inks. I like the grungy look of this in contrast to the clean cut image of Eliza - which I thought was quite fitting to the story of the film!

Distressed Gesso Background Technique

The current theme on the MAMMA group over on Flick is to make ATCs with a distressed background using Gesso and inks as described by Trish Bayley in her great tutorial.

The theme was 'Friends' but of course I overlooked that and was merrily making some ATCs using this technique using some rubber stamps with vintage adverts on them - doh! I made a couple more with a friendship theme too! My efforts are shown above.

An Altered Key

This month's challenge over on Flickr's GAS MAMMA (group for altered art swaps)is to alter a key with romance as a theme.

Not being the most imaginative of people I couldn't think of how to effectively alter a key - a key's a key right! In the end I decided to make a little piece of artwork - with the key as the focal point - and used a mini canvas measuring just 2 1/2" x 3".

I love the shape of the old key I used and it was very rusty to begin with so I just enhanced it a little with some metallic gold rub on and added two silver heart shaped gems at the top. I entwined some gold beading around it and through some lace too which is attached to the canvas by a heart shape brad. The canvas itself I painted with acrylic, coloured the edges with more of the gold metallic rub on - coated the whole thing with beeswax and adhered some music score with more of the wax (it's an extract from 'Get me to the church on time' from My Fair Lady) A bit of lace top and bottom and a couple of flowers to finish.

Seeing as I was at a loss as to what to do for this challenge, I'm really pleased with the end result.

Blog Giveaway

Wanda (who is known as needlewings over on Flickr)is giving away some gorgeous goodies over on her blog 'A Frayed of Fibers' to celebrate her 100th posting.

You need to go to her blog, leave her a comment and you'll be in the draw! While you're there, take a look at some of her beautiful creations - not to mention some cute ducks too!