Dancing In The Moonlight

This is my entry for this week's digital challenge at Digital Whisper.ning. The theme for the challenge was moonlight and we were given the image of the moon reflecting on water (provided by Stock Exchange). I added this incredible background from a kit I bought a long time ago that I keep coming back to again and again. It is from Madame Mim and Milla Designs and it's called Enchanted Forest. It is an awesome kit; tons of gorgeous, magical elements. Love it!! The kit and her designs can be found at catscrap.com in their shopping section. The dancer is an image I cut out of a fashion magazine a couple of years ago. I just loved the silhouette and have used it in some of my other digital art. I added some more moonbeams coming from the moon just to highlight her a little better.

I've got two face sketches mounted on wood that I am starting to work on today. I always get a little nervous when I start these paintings. I'm afraid I'll "mess up" the sketch. I need to get over that; the worst thing that could happen is I do mess it up. I still have plenty of options. The sketches are saved on my computer and I could print out another one and mount it. Or I could go with the "mistake" and keep painting to see where that takes me. Suzi Blu said in one her classes that procrastination is fear. I can relate to that! I've been putting off working on these pieces because of my fears that they won't turn out like I want.

Also on the agenda today: mail out the Artist Trading Pin I made for a swap in the Art Techniques Yahoo group I belong to. I've said before that I am not a jewelry maker but I love jewelry. I've got a little workshop set up in the basement with my Dremel drill and lots of wire, charms, beads and miscellaneous findings. I push myself to sign up for some of these swaps just so I'll go down there and work with these fun things.

I had never even heard of an artist trading pin. It's just what it sounds like: you make a little pin to trade using collage, paint, beads, whatever you want. There are some very talented artists in that group and I'm always learning from them. This is the same group I made the 240 fat pages of my fabric paper for. As a matter of fact, part of that batch of fabric paper was used as the background for the little collage in this pin! The theme of the swap was the fall season. I thought the fabric paper had the perfect fall colors. I added a transparency of a snippet from a song called "October" that I found in a song book I picked up at a flea market last summer. And I found the perfect little leaf charm to finish it off. The pin is 1.5" x 1.5" and I made it two-sided so the wearer could have two options. Here is the "front":

Here is the back:

There is a glare on the glass in this photo. That's why it shows up kind of pale. This is basically the same background with a butterfly rub-on added.

I had made another pin first but was not happy with it at all. It was something that I had tried on wood. At least I did try. But after looking at the album of some of the other pins that were made I was reminded of all of these little supplies I had down in the workshop. Yay! I think I will make some more of these for gifts (with different themes, of course). Hopefully the person that gets this pin will like it.

Now, off to the post office and then I'll tackle my fears and my paints and get started on those two faces. ;)