More Small Collages

Here are the sweet little items I did for a friend to give to her new twin neices for their baptisms.

Before they were born, each girl was assigned a color -- one pink and one purple. They picked out clothes and room decor using those colors, so I was glad to stick with the idea. But, it was also fun to include bits of the theme fabric from each piece in the other piece. I'm sure that's how sisters are -- totally individual but with similar foundations.

The words "marked as Christ's own forever" come from the Sacrament of Baptism in the Book of Common Prayer that we use in the Episcopal Church. Such a complete statement of faith in those few small words. I also used a shell in each piece since it is a very common symbol of baptism.

I got handy with Photoshop and covered up the letters on the alpha beads I used to spell out their names.

These pieces were very challenging. My friend wanted smallish items, but I found myself wanting to include other design elements that I just didn't have space for. (Was I just implying I wanted to make something bigger?! Blasphemy!) The girly colors and theme are also a bit outside my comfort zone. Just yesterday I said I like muddy colors, right? It's also such a challenge to make something for a friend. There is the added worry of whether they will *really* like it. I guess as an artist you just have to let that go.

I ended up mounting these pieces on stretched canvas. They looked so slick -- very clean, contemporary and fresh. And the white of the canvas complemented some of the elements used in the small quilts. The format let the artwork shine without being disturbed by a frame. So, now they are ready to hang. Not to mention -- the stretched canvas is much more economical than framing.

Did I say I was going to get the binding on long skinny yesterday? Not so much.