Reta's square 2nd EC

EDIT: originally written on Oct 18/08



First of all, as Grand Vizieress, i should be pilloried! For the first time, i haven't met a deadline with this project. Finished today, it will be mailed on Monday Oct 20th, 2 days after the deadline...i am so ashamed!

Reta's design was very basic, on a pretty background but with no clues really about where she wanted it to head---which is okay, as that's the very nature of the game! I chose the square at the bottom right.

I was unsure where to start! Reta had said we could use any colours, but i decided i would go with the general colouring as it was---soft, romantic and a bit old looking. I thought of ilustrations from a child's book that perhaps had been coloured by hand. First i used metallic markers on the legs, then i started thinking of where this "person" would be standing. I wanted some texture so used this stitch, layering it and using 6 strands each of 4 different greens:

(The foiling and beading by the way were added as the last step.) I redid the legs with a bit of metallic paint as they were too faded, and quilted around them, padding just the leg and foot area to add some dimensional relief.

I had to pierce larger holes in this metal leaf so that the needle would pass through with all that thread and not break. It was a snarly mess at some points and i said a few bad words! I'm filing this technique/idea for later use in other projects as well:}



The whole square was then beaded and gently sprayed randomly with an adhesive, the blue, green and copper foil pressed on---i deliberately did it over the whole shebang, beads, stitching, painting and leaf, as i wanted it to look "aged".

I wanted to do more stitching over top of the foiling, but decided i would probably hate myself for adding and adding..... and adding, as is my wont! I glued an amber rhinestone in the middle of the leaf before i packaged it up to go to the next player, but forgot to get that last picture!