A Summer's Day. . .

Thanks to a post from a blogging friend, I found the perfect distraction after the intensity of Jane Dunnewold's class and other projects I have been working on and discovered a great website--Lenna Andrews' Creative Swaps. Each month she posts a couple of possible swaps you can sign up for and the first one in September was a postcard swap on the theme of "A Summer's Day. . . ."  If you send her three postcards on that theme, you will receive three back, each from a different artist. She supplies plenty of helpful guidelines about making art postcards, and they can be done in any medium, not just fabric. So I decided to give it a try.

For my first attempt, I used some little tree stamps I had made in Jane's class to add some paint to a hand-dyed pieced of fabric:

I obviously added some stitching and some fused shadows. On the back of the card, you were supposed to put your name, e-mail address and then finish the phrase "A summer's day. . . ."  I added ". . .is all about sunshine and shadow."

I decided on butterflies for the focus of the next postcard, and just happened to have a butterfly stamp that I made in Jane's class as well.  I played with transparent and opaque paint and then topped the painted butterflies with a fabric one and added some quilting lines:

And on to my third! I was having a lot of fun by this time and decided to give my butterflies another try since I had already made the templates for the one above. This time, instead of stamping I decided on a fused background of large circles.

The gold thread I couched on the wings and the variegated pearl cotton scatter stitches gave it a zing. On all of these the background fabric was fused to Peltex and then the edges turned over to the back and fused to form a finished edge. Then the back fabric was fused on, covering the turned over edges. In all three I made use of those leftover bits of my hand-dyes that I hate to throw away. 

The back of this reads "A summer's day is not complete without a butterfly."

Something kept me from finishing the second postcard, perhaps because I was feeling that it needed something more. So one day I started playing with adding bits of color.  See what you think of my addition of some small rough cut circles to my final version.

I added my theme statement, "A summer's day brings sunshine and butterflies," put a backing on it,  and declared it done!

Now I just have to add plastic sleeves and postage and send them off to Lenna.

And, if you are still reading, thanks for the company!