A tissue, a tissue...we build a house!

So, with friends staying over the holidays it was guaranteed to be a busy, fun time, with no time for creativity- of the non-food or drink kind!

So I have been busy in the last week catching up for my swaps... 

Marilyn is hosting a "Winter Wonderland" ATC swap on Milliande's. I decided to try something new, rather than painting or collaging pictures. 

I loosely sketched a winter scene on watercolour paper, then proceded to paste coloured tissue papers in the appropriate places. Once I was happy with the arrangement of colours I overlaid scrumpled white tissue to subdue the colour and make it more abstract. 

After the gel medium had totally set I loosely went over the faint pencil lines with a technical pen to outline the house and details.

They're ready to post now, I hope the recipients like them.

It was a fun experiment which I may well use again in a future project...

Why not have a go yourself? All you need is a few scraps of tissue paper, some glue or gel medium and a waterproof pen. 

Yule decorations already??

Well, sad to say, Yes! In all the shops already....I am one of these people who, although enjoying the notion of celebration, is totally fed up with the increasing over production/saturation and ongoing ruthlessness of retail xmas. The exploitation of staff at xmas, and the bullying of customers to buy more, for ever longer periods of time really makes me mad. Yes, you guessed it- I worked for a big retail store, one of the many who care only about year on profits... but enough of that... xmas should be about friendship, love, sharing and remembering. So on with the sharing....

So, Yule decorations already? Sadly, if you're actually making them then they need to be finished in good time, so I have started super early this year, and as Palma has started the 2012 Wichtel Swap already I've begun my countdown for crafting.

The swap calls for a hanging decoration and this years theme is "Reindeer". I had a good mooch online to see what was about, but wanted to do something original. I know a cutout isn't particularly original in itself, but I hoped that collaging the paper might go some way to help. 

So I spent yesterday gluing, pressing, cutting and sewing... not so difficult, but sometimes it's simple ideas that work out best... see what you think.

The sewing was pretty hard on the fingers so I actually resorted to digging out my rarely used thimble- unheard of! 

I really like how they've turned out so I'm going to spend tomorrow joining fabrics to make quilted versions... I'll let you know how they go...