My Mexican Folk Art pages for Dianne

It occurred to me that in my haste to get these pages out the door to Dianne, I forgot to sign them. That is something I am not used to forgetting, but none of these have been signed. However, here they are, not my best work, but finished as I tried to give Dianne a few Mexican Folk Art Icons and bits for her handmade book. This is my final set of pages for what we have been calling our 6 X 6 swappers. Incidentally, everything was created on 140 lb. watercolor paper.

I began by painting this page with Twinkling H20 in periwinkle. To that I added green and red paint chips from the hardware store, over which I placed filigree pieces and one metal crown on a gold paint chip.


While doing research on Mexican Folk Art, I learned that crowns are very important icons. For this page, I began with a yellow Twinkling H20. I found a single printed crown from a copy of a Loteria card and attached it along with a metal crown I thought looked similar.


Dear Marlynn, another player in the swap, sent me these Mexican Art cards. I was quite grateful, although I'm not sure I did them justice. I used two colors of green Twinkling H20s on this page and the next one for the backgrounds.


Again, not sure how these cards are usually used, I gave the No. 1 cards preferential treatment on this page.


For the background on this page, I used chalk ink, along with some pigment ink. I printed a flaming heart icon from the internet and cut it out. I added my swirl rubber stamp for interest.


Trees are also interesting and often used icons in Mexican Folk Art. I don't even begin to claim that I could make one of those stylized trees, but some from the internet DO sort of look like the one I drew and cut out. Although the hands were nothing like milagros, I used them anyway. And I thought they complimented the necklace piece that I thought had a definite Mexican feel to it.


At one time I had two ornamental red peppers, but misplaced one in my craft room when I had to consolidate things from the basement studio. The one pepper became the decoration for the pocket I used for the tag. A heart and cross combined together to make a heart-like decoration that I centered on one of the extra playing cards.


And of course, my name and information are on the back of this card that I first covered with gesso and gold fluid acrylic. A piece of red glitzy fabric completed the page.


For the final page, I considered trying to color the skull in, then decided it was probably not the thing to do, since I have a limited number of ink pens (two to be exact) that are not black. The decorations at the top and bottom of the page are from a couple of napkins I bought when I first learned about our swap choices. Although they are not exactly Folk Art icons, I thought they went with the page. Three polymer clay skeletons I made from a handmade mold, along with one final gold crown, complete the page.