Dia de los Muertos (et al...)

Here's one of the pieces I made for the Day of the Dead Swap I'm partici- pating in. I still need to add the hanging part, but other than that, they're all finished. Each piece measures about 5 inches square. I'm happy with the way they turned out. And I got to experiment with the rolled edge binding for the first time.

And in a completely different color scheme, here's another photo of part of my fabric collage. The picture doesn't do the texture in this piece justice. I used Xpandaprint, which I purchased from Meinke Toy. (It comes in white and black.) Per Beryl Taylor's instructions in "Mixed Media Explorations", I brushed it on through a stencil. Then when it was still wet, I heated it with a heat gun. As it dries, the Xpandaprint sort of bubbles and expands and turns into this weird-feeling stuff. I then painted the entire thing beige, let it dry, and then dry brushed an off-white over the top. It's pretty cool-looking in person. This is Steve's favorite technique on the collages. I suppose because it's the most manly, given all of the other hearts and flowers. He's right though... it is pretty darned cool.