More Jigsaw Pieces

Vintage Bathing Beauties for Elaine

Well I am now in panic mode - I can't believe Christmas Day is only 6 days away!! We leave town on the 23rd and come back on the 2nd of January so I am trying to get my act together so that there are some remnants of sanity left by the 25th.

Vintage for Jen

The result of course is that I am having to restrict my nightly creative time as there is so much else to do that really is much more urgent and probably more important too. So I have just uploaded some more close-up scans of the jigsaw pieces and hope that you enjoy them.

Vintage for Sarah

A Northern Hemisphere Christmas Postcard

Today's post brought this wonderful mixed media Christmas postcard from Kate North - it is just gorgeous! Thanks Kate.

I have been posting here recently about my first attempt at the January Postcard for the Calendar Girls challenge and this is my finished effort. The beauty of starting early is that it gives me a chance to reflect on it and do another one in January if I get some better ideas! Since the last picture I have added beading to the flower centre, glossed over the whole flower with Antique Dimensional Magic and added backing and finishing to the edges.

And as I am celebrating the completion of the jigsaw, here are scans of some of the pieces:

"Beauty" for Lexie

My "Vintage Dressmaking" pieces

"Vintage Children" for Marg

The Jigsaw is Finally Finished!

Well yesterday I managed to finally (!!) finish my second lot of jigsaw pieces for the swap that I messed up first time round. Fortunately everyone has been very patient waiting for me. This is a blurry photo of the finished pieces altogether. I will upload scans of the individual pieces tomorrow. I am so relieved to have them finished - the need to do them has been hanging over me!

Other things I finished yesterday - a Lutradur/Lace and Beading ATC for a trade with Bina in Israel (at the bottom of this post), the tag to go with Vicci's Square Deco (back above, front below) and my January postcard for the Calendar Girls (which I will post tomorrow). I am away for a couple of weeks over Christmas so unfortunately will have to skip the various blog challenges for a while, particularly as I just don't have any spare time this week before we go away.

A Tale of Woe & My Latest Fabric Postcard

Well I am not sure that I really am ready to share this tale but in the hope that it may be therapeutic...

If you read my blog regularly you will know that I joined an eight person Jigsaw Exchange that involved all eight of us starting out with the same design blank jigsaw. The pieces were to be numbered in a specific way and we were each allocated certain pieces to do for each other person so that the end result would be a complete puzzle for each of is incorporating all eight participants artwork. Sounds relatively straight forward, yes?

Well I thought so too but I have discovered that I misread the columns in the spreadsheet and did not do the right number pieces. This is about as tragic as a jigsaw puzzle can get! Apart from me, nobody has a puzzle that works and it is all because of me. When I found out yesterday I was stunned - at my stupidity, at what it means etc etc. So expect to hear more about jigsaw puzzles as I will be doing replacement pieces post haste as soon as I can locate another identical puzzle. Thankfully everyone is being very patient, tolerant and understanding..

And here are the beautiful (correctly numbered!!) pieces I received from the wonderful Marg Buhagiar (who I don't think has a blog). My theme was Vintage Dressmaking.


So to console myself today, in between Saturday type domestic stuff, I worked on my fabric postcards for another exchange - this one has the theme "Oh, Baby!" -the scan of the prototype is at the top of this post - and you might notice that I can now include some nice decorative stitches thanks to my week-old sewing machine! I need to sew my lace on strighter on the remaining postcards. I have also been painting vliesofix getting ready for the 63 (7 sets of 9) metallic inchies I have to finish by the end of the month. I'll post some pictures tomorrow when they are dry. Now I am off to make some postcards out of fabric paper a la Beryl Taylor.

Jigsaw Pieces Ready to Post

Well, it has been bit of a learning curve but I have finished my jigsaw pieces for Annie van Leeuwin's swap. I really enjoyed doing them BUT I think I need to learn to just go with the flow with these things as they definitely took longer than they should have given both the size and the end result!! The various themes were Vintage Dressmaking (my theme!), Vintage Children, Vintage Bathing Beauties, Vintage Nudes, Vintage Women with Wings, Vintage, Beauty and one was open. We each did two pieces for each person/theme (on a pre-planned basis so that our eventual personal jigsaw fits together!).

I haven't used a consistent background like Jen and Nat so it doesn't actually look that cohesive all together and seeing it in a photo really highlights a few design issues (such as the way-too-dark wrap around the vintage nude!!) but hopefully the pieces will pass muster! I don't think I will display my pieces as a set- I think I will use them more as individual embellishments on journals etc. Not sure yet - will make my mind up when I receive the remaining pieces.

I have also made good progress with my "pattern" fibre postcards so they should be finished tomorrow night. Currently thinking about what I will make for the Gothic Art challenge this week (Vacation/Place) and also Think Monday - Think ATC (Pirates)...

Back to work tomorrow - I love long weekends, I really think a four day work week would be so much more civilized!