The new bed

Hi!  I have a page today about somebody besides Lenny and me!  

Dillon is getting very tall and he got a surprise this Christmas.  Here's the journaling for this page:

“Go clean your room.”  Ah, man, that is not what you want to hear right before Christmas.  Dillon had been trying to guess what his gift would be.  He cleaned up his room and soon his dad was dissembling his bed.  Then they went over to the neighbors and carried a mattress over (the neighbors had been hiding it).  Dillon still didn’t know what was going on.  “It’s your new bed.”  Dillon was thrilled to graduate from a twin to a regular bed for Christmas.  He was even happier when his mom carried in a new TV for his room (though he did think it was for his dad, at first).  Grandma Jeannie gave him a new coverlet. The only drawback was cleaning his room and having to carry in his own mattress.  The price of growing up – and up and up.

For the page, I combined traditional elements like October Afternoon stickers and my homemade tags with a couple of techniques from Art Class.  I got the idea for the negative space lettering without filling in the middle of 'e's and 'o's - sooo much easier! - from Wilna.  I painted strips of acrylic paint in the red, blue and greens to go behind the letters.

The page is for the challenge to try some different kind of stitching techniques on a page.  I tried metallic threads.  I'm glad I gave it a go here and not on a sewing project.  I'm also glad Wilna says she "isn't in the perfect business" because this sure isn't perfect.  You can see that a lot of my stitching rows don't complete or they stop and restart.  My thread broke on every single row.  I finally had luck with a smoother metallic threat.  I've had this thread for years before I got this last sewing machine.  I was working on a Sunday so I couldn't call my sewing machine repair shop to see if they had suggestions - and I admit I still haven't called them.  I'd love to figure out why the metallic is breaking on my Pfaff machine when it sews everything else like a dream.

Anyway, it was a fun technique.  I also sewed various ribbons on a die cut Christmas tree for the embellishment.

I think the marriage of clean elements and artistic, handmade elements worked well.  Now if Jaime will just send me more pictures....