Good Art, Good Friends....

So it is that I have had so little time to post of late, that I am feeling particularly loquacious (Or whatever the word is for wanting to do lots o' typing) today. I want to tell a little about my adventures in Artland. I belonged to a group that met once monthly to exchange ATCs (artist trading cards) up until December, when life decided I needed to do some other things. I am currently getting my need to create fulfilled by participating in a few swaps through an online group. It is my true belief that the reason I joined the ATC group to start with was that I was introduced Dawn, who has become a great friend and a wonderful source of artsy inspiration for me. She and I have done a couple of lunches when I was in Phoenix, but she invited me to her home for a whole day of crafting fun a couple of weeks ago. We are both participating in a chunky book swap with the theme "The Wizard of Oz". How fun is that? I chose to do 2 pages, which adds up to 40 since you do 20 of each page. My pages were 'The Wicked Witch of the West' and 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow'. Dawn had 'The Lollipop Guild'. We decided that, since we had only a few days to finish and we were both a bit behind, our pages would be our project of the day and we spent the largest part of the day working on our pages and bouncing ideas off each other. I had kind of hit the wall in regards to inspiration with it all, and Dawn was a great help in seeing things from a different perspective. Part of the fun of doing this whole thing was that I got to see Dawn's lovely home. It is decorated to perfection, as I knew it would be, and you can see all of Dawn's artistic ability and flair throughout. Dawn prepared a lovely salad for our lunch. It was so pretty I needed to take a picture. It had all the best components-aesthetics, nutrition and yumminess!!! I also met her doggie, Pumpkin, who is every bit as sweet as she is cute. And the coup de gras was meeting her Hubby, whom I have heard about for months. I always love to hear someone speak in loving words about their spouse, and Dawn really loves her guy. As it turns out, he is really such a nice man and I am happy that I finally got the chance to meet him. Our next feat will be getting all of us together as couples to have dinner. We are all limited by schedules, but I think we will get it together one of these days. Here is a peek at my pages in progress. I have some of Dawn's as well, but don't want to spill the beans for her until the books are in the hands of the recipients.

The pages on the right are the Rainbow, but these are the back sides, which we are required to decorate at least a little so that the page is not stark white. When I receive the book all together, I will post some photos of my pages as they ended up. As with most projects of this magnitude, I was still adding to them an hour before I put them in the mail. It seems we are never completely satisfied with our own work, but I was very happy to get them on their trip to Phoenix. Cannot wait to see the finished product.