Completed journals are in the mail

Yesterday I showed the covers of all four art journals I have finished. They are now in the mail and will be to their unsuspecting recipients soon.

This cover was made using mostly hand dyed fabric. The green was originally a white bed sheet and the speckled insert was made using Easter egg dye watered down with vinegar and sprayed through a mister on unbleached muslin. Other fabrics were sewn on for decoration.

I have a real problem with my sewing area. I really don't have enough room to spread out my fabric and I keep catching the papers and fabric on my mini blinds in the background. However, you can see the inside of this cover before I added the two sets of signatures.

Here is the inside front, also made using hand dyed sheets. The front pocket is a piece of upholstery.

The back pocket is made of canvas and also dyed with the same green.

Here is the completed outside. This is for a friend who I think of as being inspired by vintage, lace, and romance. The cover hopefully will be something she likes.

This is a birthday gift for my friend Halle. No sense trying to hide it. She knows she getting something. And when she saw the pink yesterday, it was obvious she would put it together. Pink and Halle are synonymous. Think Halle, think pink. The base is a blouse that I cut to size and covered with tulle. I added the lace to the top and bottom for this girly girl.

The inside is another sheet I dyed using three color mists.

The back is not green, but has a lovely silver sheen. It was a piece I made from a gelatin print. The two pinks weren't exactly the right color, so I spent a lot of time trying to match them. I got it OK in spots, but some of the original pink still shows through.

This is for another friend. This friend is eclectic. She is a painter, a drawer, an art journal lover. She probably has three art journals going right now.

For her cover, I paired some shimmery fabric that was see through with my hand dyed sheet. The spine is ribbon and matches the book tie.

Because she is eclectic, I used a different style fabric on the inside front

and inside back.

And finally, this one was not finished at the time I took the photo. It is for the graduate whose signatures I showed here and here.

This is the outside. I used several cuts of fabric and some of my hand dyed fabric over which I added more of that fancy glittery stuff. The recipient loves lime green, and this was as close as I could get to the color I associate with her. Both the sides are dictionary definitions in fabric, which is some really fun print.

Here is the inside, showing both pockets. Keeping with the school theme, the pocket on the left was made using arithmetic print. As soon as my friends have theirs, I will show the inside of the remaining three. Have a great day everyone.

Today's blog is Druga Szesnascie (translated from Polish means 2:16). Eliza, the blog owner, is in the Project 2010 Dress Up project and also makes lovely altered art that will have you swooning over and drooling on your keyboard. You will find more than a few lovely pieces of altered art that you will fall in love with, from ATCs to Altered Books to her quirky collages and decoupaged art. She uses conventional images in unconventional ways. Like me, she uses more images to make her collages and few, if any rubber stamps. In fact, I've not seen any stamps at all and I've been through many pages of her blog.

I wanted to introduce you to Eliza for yet another reason. She is having a wonderful giveaway on her blog, which I saw thanks to Patty. Eliza reminded me that she had read my comment about my feelings on giveaways and this is what she wrote on her blog giveaway post:

what to do?
YOU DON'T HAVE TO have a blog to enter - in such case please leave your e-mail address in your comment.
YOU DON'T HAVE TO become my follower.
YOU DON'T HAVE TO answer any tricky questions.
YOU DON'T HAVE TO leave info about this giveaway on your blog (unless you want to).
to enter you just need to leave a comment (just one). if you feel like it, you can also write your favorite inspirational quote but it's not obligatory.

the thing is, I'm not organising this giveaway to boost my blog stats. what I want to do is to thank you.
for all your lovely coments. for the opportunities to learn. for your support. for my wings. for Faith and Strength that I found.

Isn't that super? So head on over to Eliza's blog. Even if you don't win her giveaway (good till July 16), you will still win because she is such a fabulous artist.