Victorian dress form

Today I looked at a blank page and wondered what to put there then decided in honor of all my years of sewing I would draw a dressform. This sort was made with metal strapping and welded at the joins. It also had a bustle shape formed right into it. I can imagine that they never thought bustles would go out of style at the time. I sketched the dressform in pencil then watercolored the background in varried shades of pinks and purples. When the background was dry I took a metallic gold pen and filled in the lines of the dress form. Then I cut out three leaves and took five small flowers from the jar of white flowers from the Michaels Recollections line of flowers and colored them with some watercolor. I drew the parasol on a scrap of watercolor paper and painted that with the purples from the background painting and drew the lines in with a purple metallic pen. Then I found a small scrap of purple scrapbook paper and I cut out a hat and gave it a pink hat band and a purple feather with metallic pen. Then I cut out a shoe to place at the bottom of the page. I glued everything in place and added a bit here and there to blend it all in. When the glue was dry I also sprayed everything with Mod Podge sealer.  it says " Fashions of Spring " on the page and then I added a button on the hat as well.

Adding to the stash

I had some fun today as I went to Michaels for some more goodies for my art journal. I found some other K and Company die cuts on special from a design group called Engraved Garden. Since I had done three travel pages with antique travel themes I looked for things to add to that. This was the right package for that, I added a pocket watch to one page, an antique camera to another page, and a bicycle to the third page. Even the old stamps on the travel paper I used reminded me of all the times my uncle Bill let me look through his big box of stamps. There were many from England, France, Belgium and Germany from World War Two, from all the letters he sent home to my aunt.
I also got a large dragonfly stamp to add a large image to the page with the small dragonfly printed on the paper. It is sort of an art nouveau style dragonfly by Stampendous, with some vines behind it. I really like the intricate veining in the wings of the dragonfly. Since the page was one with a dark background i used an off white ink for the dragonfly image.
I also purchased a package of small star stick ons. They are all clear with a silvered backing and they finished off the Flavia inspired crescent moon painting i had already done.
Back in the art department I found a compact package of watercolors , small pans of color , 36 colors and I thought that would be handy to work from when painting small items in the journal rather than hauling out the huge box of tubes of paint.
Then i tried to pass the 1.50 bin of goodies and couldnt make it quite past without adding something to my cart. I got a sheet of dimensional stick ons with a summer theme of delpheniums and sunflowers. I know i can use them on a card or two if i dont use them in the art journal. I also found a package of six mini colored pencils. I had been looking for just something like this as I plan to make a travel pack of art materials to toss in my purse when i go to the doctors office or any place where you just wait around. I am cutting some ATC backgrounds out of drawing paper and I want to make a little felt sort of booklet to put the supplies in so its handy to take with me.If you dont know what ATC's are just ask.
I just finished up putting a collection of ATC's in one of my dollar store journal books. This particular one is based on Gods and Goddesses. Some of them are pics i got off the computer and others are things i have done mostly with colored pencil.