Fat Book Entry #1: Bombshells!

I can’t stand it! I have to share! I finally finished my first two entries for the Fat Book swap I’m participating in. Just as a refresher: I found out about this swap through my friend Carmen’s blog who found out from Roni’s blog, who sent out the challenge and is putting everything together. There are 10 women participating. The overall theme is “Women”, with 10 different subthemes we are to carry out. Each piece has to be easily replicated since we have to produce 10 originals of each topic. That means that each of us will end up with 100 originals when it’s all said and done; each piece is 4” x 4”. I thought it would be a great way for me to get my feet wet with mixed media a little more. Little did I know it sounds like I’m the rookie of the group! We have a Yahoo group set up and I’ve seen things posted about glazes and copic markers and all sorts of things I know very little about! Saturday, I sent out a note to the group with the topic “Who are you people, anyway? :-)” since we’ve been carrying on these conversations for several weeks now, and I really had no clue who I was talking to. Thankfully others had the same thought, so it was great to learn more about everyone. It’s a very neat group of gals, coming from all over the country with all kinds of experiences. I look forward to getting to know them all better over the next four months.

So back to my first entry; our first topic is “Bombshells”. I showed you the faux postage stamp I made for this one a while back, so now you can see the finished piece. I cut up the 9” x 12” light cardboard I collected from our graduation program boxes as the base (recycling at its best!), and covered it with hot pink rag paper. Let me back up a minute here…I actually started out with a deep red paper flecked with gold accents, but once I placed my postage stamp on there I hated it, so I had to rethink it and start over. I like the pink much better! I stamped the pink with a French writing stamp, googled Lana Turner quotes for a good quote, and then brought all the bits and pieces together. I glued each piece on the other with an acid free glue stick and still have glue all over my workshop. Then before adding the rhinestones and the smooch, I sealed it and gave the paper a little sheen with Mod Podge. The smooch is sealed as well, and I quickly learned my lesson on that one. I cut them all out before I sealed them! That meant I had to individually seal each one. For my next entry, I remembered to seal before I cut, making things much easier! I’ll share the second entry with you later. For now it’s back to the jewelry bench; I'm participating in the three-day 17th Annual Lakeridge Winery Harvest Festival this weekend!

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