Altered Art Divas

I belong to an online group of Fantastic Artists who call themselves The Altered Art Divas.
They host a lot of different swaps as someone is always up for swapping a little art...
right?
I signed up for a couple of banner swaps this year.
The first one is "Shades of White".
A Winter Wonderland Swap.
We were to use a white background with a touch of blue.
I played around with a couple of ideas and finally settled on one.
I drew one of my journal page images (the tree) onto a canvas background.
I used Derwent watercolor pencils to add just a touch of color. In order to keep the Winter Wonderland look, I added a lot of water to wash most of the color out.
Except the touch of blue.
My touch of blue is two little blue birds perched in the tree.
They are funky little birds with wonky beaks.
I used my trusty Bernina to thread sketch all the images. Like I said earlier, I drew the picture on the fabric first. I used a regular HB sketch pencil.
And tried to stay on the lines...but I do tend to not only color outside the lines but sew outside the lines too...
Diva's - don't look too closely!
I had used canvas as my background and it was kinds flimsy.
So I added a layer of some old Heat & Bond (I usually use Mistyfuse for all my fusible but I have several packages of Heat & Bond around...trying to use what I have here at home) and then placed a light colored fabric as the backing.
I used a zig zag stitch around the edges.
And man, did my production sewing skills come in handy at this part! I zipped those babies up in
No Time!

I used lace as ties for some of the banners and ribbon on the rest of them.

I also added a few silver snowflakes with some of the shiny thread that my son gave me for Christmas.

It IS a Winter Wonderland Art Banner you know...

I can't wait to get my package of 20 banners (How awesome is that!?)!

I'm sending mine out tomorrow. They are due to Debi's house on February 1 so I am actually EARLY...

can you believe that!?

Now I can start on the "Bird Banners" - which are the next swap I am signed up for.

All 14 of them are due by April 1.

So that means I have been ahead of schedule all year long.

Hope your year is going well.

I forgot to adopt A Word (you know, The defining Word of the Year) this year.

Maybe I'll think about that today...

Remember to flex your creative muscles today.