My remaining white swap pages

Here are the rest of my white pages for October's six person swap. This was our first month, and my first swap partner was Gina who unfortunately doesn't have a blog. Her white theme really spoke to me, even though I'm having a rough time getting decent art to flow. To recap, Gina sent each of us pages for her book. She didn't want us to struggle with the binding area. Be sure to click the photos for the complete picture.

As I said on Thursday, I was really looking forward to working in white. For this spread, I began with the music page that Gina sent, then added some lacy mulberry paper over about 1/3 of the page. I struggled to give this page a name or a sentiment, and ended up adding no words to this nature inspired piece, which included a real feather found in my yard, craft feathers, a silk flower, and a real beach shell. The people in the background are from a paint chip sample, something I know Gina will appreciate, since she likes to use them, too.


I actually showed how I made this page back in September. I want to thank Lynn from Her Creative Spirit for the original tutorial. This is some of my dried lavender. It is special to me, since I only had the bush one season before it died. If Gina presses on the page, she will get a whiff of lavender. Even trapped under a napkin and glue, the lavender still gives off a sweet scent.


Everyone should have known I would find a way to make some pages using my sewing machine. I began with the second unadorned page and added mostly paint chips, along with a book image, a flower petal, and button to this plain white page.

More book pages, paint chips, tea stained paper, and, when I thought it looked unfinished, grabbed a rub-on, my first ever, and added the word "believe." I sure believe in rub-ons now that I've used one. They are fun and give spectacular results.


I have to admit, this is one of my least favorite pages. I have no real pens, and thought the one I was using along with a stencil, was supposed to have white ink in it. But that was not the case. It would have been a fun page had I made sure I had the right tools before I started. I apologize Gina. Maybe you can go over the "white" word with a real white pen!


When I got this page from Gina, I thought it was really dark, but thought if I just lightened it a bit, it might work. So I got out the gesso and a scraggly paint brush and dry brushed some of the darkness out of the page. I then added the stamped image (another stamped image received in a swap that both Gina and I were in) that I trimmed to fit the page, then added the flowers and rhinestones.

These are my contributions for the month of October, and I sure hope Gina likes them. I even surprised myself by looking forward to this theme, since before these pages, I was so burned out on anything "True Colors."

I'm sort of on a recycle kick again. Seems I don't use enough recycled objects in my art. But John Dahlsen certainly does. In fact, he's an environmental artist and painter. And, I am delighted to have found his web site because I never seem to feature enough men who make art. As an environmental artist, John uses a lot of purged plastic, those bits and pieces that spew hot distorted plastic out of an injection molding machine. He also makes assemblages from found and recycled objects, including driftwood. He has won many awards, including awards for his use of plastic bags. John lives and exhibits his art in Australia. He is renown there. Although I have only scratched the surface of his art, if you are like me, you will spend a lot of time perusing his site, especially if you are a recycler.