Collage and thrifty couture

I did this collage for the Collage couture class that I won from SIS. I gessoed the watercolor paper and added a piece of tissure paper that had been stamped. When dry, I painted it with 3 colors of w/c paint. I used gel medium to transfer the image of my favorite Picasso painting and finally added some cutout pears (that I had painted on a practice w/c piece), the feather, the selvage edge of some fabric, and some vintage buttons. It seemed to need something on the left side so I covered the image with some paper and then used the same stamp to stamp the Chinese characters along the edge. This was so much fun and the collage is so liberating. I also love incorporating things I have made into the collages so I never throw any paintings away.

I did this layout inspired by the Thrifty class - I used a vintage paisley postcard, the actual packaging for the set of postcards, a strip from a vintage children's book, and made yo-yos from some Amy Butler scraps. The orange felt flower, the scallop, and the blue paper I got from Angie Bracken as a RAK on NSD.

For this layout, I used a round sponge and watercolor paints to do the background. I made a soup of paints on my palette and just laid the sponge on it and then on the paper. Parts of the flowers and the saying came in the RAK from Angie and the postcard is vintage. I have been making layered flowers like mad lately and have really depleted my flower parts. Pretty soon I will have to switch to a new embelly or just make funky flowers from papers and fabrics. I made three flowers using some Japanese fabric and gel medium (Martha's instructions in the Thrifty class) but I need to figure out what to use them on.

My last watercolor class for this session is tomorrow so I need to play a little today with my paints. AND I will be doing a tutorial on the Year of Color blog in August showing how to make my tessellations wallhanging. So far I have done one in lavendar and green(lilac inspired), red and green(poinsettia inspired), and the latest in yellow and green(sunflower inspire). In August we will be doing multicolor so I have planned a multicolor wallquilt to be like a summer garden with various flowers and leaves. I went through my stash and found the perfect inspiration fabric and I actually have enough to do the border. Then I went through and pulled out every fabric that might work (about 40) so now it's time to begin the layout and cutting of pieces. I am taking photos of the process to go with the tutorial.

Have a great Sunday and I will post some more layouts this week, and maybe a painting?!?