Banner Art & Another Skinny Page

We have had a long weekend here in Western Australia and Joseph and I have made the most of the glorious spring weather and spent much of the weekend doing a garden "spring-clean". We are both feeling rather pooped and can feel muscles that haven't surfaced over the colder more sedentary winter months! BUT the garden looks a lot neater and ready for the rest of spring and summer. Because the lavender blooms early here and because the bushes needed trimming so that we could get through on the paths near them I have filled baskets full of the blooms for inside the house - don't this one look lovely?

I am in a small Australian group and we are making "Art of the Month" for a randomly selected partner and this month it was my turn to make something for Celeste Santin. For some reason everything I started this month went bad and looked awful and I was starting to get desperate so this afternoon I gave up on the paper/canvas arts and went back to fabric and made the pennant at the top of this post. I bought the background fabrics in Melbourne when I was there in May for the Art Retreat and I absolutely love them - their spring-like prettiness makes me feel very cheerful so I hope Celeste likes them too. The vintage image is printed on fabric and the rest is rather obvious (except maybe for the origins of the "jewels" which came from one of those decorative jewelled collars for champagne bottles). The leaf trim is my new most favourite "thing" and was purchased down in Esperance recently. I think I should have bought a lot more than I did!

PS Since taking this scan I have evened up the sides!

And, as I have mentioned, I am attending two Art Retreats next year (lucky me!). The first one in March is the Creative Soul Retreat and as a precursor we have the opportunity to participate in a monthly book page challenge. We can choose the style and format of our book and every month there is new theme. I decided to make a skinny book with pages in the portrait format sized 5 by 3 inches. Love this size - just big enough but not too time consuming! Anyway for September the theme was birds so this is my page -

The background is a monoprint that I made using paint and two pieces of cardstock and then brayering the result on one of the two pieces when they were pulled apart. The stamped images are by Oxford Impressions (of course!)