Fancy French Rose

  Sometimes it's fun to see how many projects you can get out of one collage sheet. With the Fancy French Rose collage sheet, I managed to get three.

The first was this card! It's 5x7 in size with a scrapbook paper background (4 3/4 x6 3/4). After I glued that down, I inked the edges in pretty pink ink (I use Colorbox Chalk Inks). Then I arranged my images cut from my collage sheet and after inking the edges glued those down too! All done!

Then I got started on this tag. Using another of the larger backgrounds on the sheet, I glued it to a shipping tag (4 3/4 x 2 3/8 in size, you can find them at office supply stores.) and trimmed the background to fit the tag. I then inked the edges in orange ink, glued down my other pieces (edges inked, of course!), added my tassle. All done!

On this tag, I did something a little different. The background for this tag is actually a piece of scrapbooking paper, cut to fit the tag. (4 3/4 x 2 3/8). And, because I still have tons of photographs from my film photography days, I knew I could find one to use! I tore the edges, inked them, and cut it to fit my tag. I then  centered the rose photo, layered my other images on top, and added my tassle, all done! And can you believe I still had images from the collage sheet left over? I saved those for my ATC's!

http://www.etsy.com/listing/38048532/fancy-french-rose-card-collage-sheet?ga_search_query=pink&ga_search_type=user_shop_ttt_id_5152319

From the Garden to the Collage Sheet

A long time ago (no, I'm not telling you how long ago) when I started taking photographs, I quickly realized flowers were often my favorite thing to photograph. That came natural to me because I love to plant flowers and watch 'em grow!

After a while though, I had lots and lots of photographs, and well, how many is too many? So one day when a friend needed cheering up, I put one of my pictures on a card and sent it with best wishes to my friend. Now I had something to do with all those photos! I even sold my cards for a while. That got to be a little time consuming and well, let's face it, it's not easy competeing with all those card companies!

I still liked the idea of creating cards to make to give to people, and had been working on collages with my photos, so putting it all together, my collage sheets were born!

And now other people could use them too! http://www.etsy.com/shop/mataart42

Everything That is Old is New Again

     One of my favorite projects is to create "new" art from those neat old photos most people forget about.

and of course you gotta have color!

One of these days, I think it would be fun to create a series of artwork using photos of my own relatives!

Who doesn't like Jane Austen movies?

Well, I know I do! I wish I could say I've read a whole Jane Austen novel all the way through though. But for now, the movies they make from those wonderful stories will do!
Months and months ago, my nephew and I were watching BBC's version of Emma. I was getting a little sleepy, so I had to stop the movie and send him home and finish the rest the next day. We stopped at the place where Mr. Knightly, after another somewhat tense conversation with Emma, walks out in the moonlight. The cinematography is that movie is fabulous!

Well, the next day when my nephew came back over to finish the movie, he told me he had wrote almost an entire song that night! Something to do with moonlight! When I asked where he got that idea he told me he didn't really know. "You don't remember the last scene of Emma before you went home?" "The moonlit scene?"

I must have been drawing on that movie too, when I created this photograph!

And, the beautiful bride to be in this photo, totally loves Jane Austen too!

Finding Inspiration in Ordinary Days

One of my favorite things to do in the morning is just go out for a walk. A lot of those mornings I carry my camera around with me. One morning I was noticing how beautiful the sun looked reflecting off all the dew drops on the grass. Even with the things we see every day, when we look at it from a different view point we see it in a fresh way.

My First Time!

Well, finally after several years of selling my photography and collage sheets online at Etsy, I thought, why not start a blog to show you what I do, where I get my inspiration, and what fun you can have creating with my collage sheets!
Most of my inspiration comes from the beauty around me!