Exchanging Ideas

I think we're all just celebrating and exchanging each other's ideas...and trying to make them our own!  It's true in our homes....our gardens....and our studios. At least it is for me.

Dotty Seiter has been doing some small collages where she is veiling some of her backgrounds with tissue to soften them.  She sometimes starts with an old painting and uses as many layers of tissue needed to get the effect that she's looking for.  Once the background is veiled....she continues work on a new collage.

Taking something old...and making it new with veiling! That got me thinking.

I've never mentioned that fact that this whole Art Heart project began with pink Valentine scrapbook papers.  

I made six kits geared more towards kids with scrapbook paper collage Art Hearts hoping to sell them at the local Handiwork shop. This was before I made the offer here on the blog.

I switched over to using painted papers pretty quickly....and in the end did take those six kits...and six more with painted papers to the store.

I had leftover pink scrapbook hearts....and Dotty's idea of veiling got me wondering if I could rework them a bit.  I started with a piece of tissue that I had used to pull up some watery pink paint on my gelli plate. I covered the heart with medium...and veiled them with the speckled edges of the tissue covering the top with another layer of medium. 

It soften and smoothed the seams of the scrapbook papers and gave the heart a more painterly texture. I liked it.

I also tried veiling the hearts with some swirls that I already had painted on tissue using white acrylic paint.

Game changer!

I had already done this little collage using circles cut from small scraps and I didn't love the hearts that I cut out.

But once I veiled one with the speckled tissue....it was more unified....and not so bad.

Here I used a swirl veil on another heart cut from the circles and turned it into an Art Heart card.

I was going to write this post yesterday....so had taken some of the photos and started a draft.  But I was wiped out at the end of the day and saved it for today. Little did I know...that Dotty was writing a post that included an idea she got from me on HER blog.  

Yup...we're all just exchanging and celebrating each other's ideas....and I'm so grateful.