Snow Day!

 It was great to wake up to a surprise snow day today!  We knew the forecast called for snow, but thought we'd only get a 2-hour delay.  It felt so good to shut off the alarm clock and go back to sleep for an extra two hours after the district decided to give us the whole day, on top of which the library was closed too!   I pootled around the house in the morning, playing in the snow with Cassie, and then packing up the outdoor Christmas lights, which I took down earlier in the week while the weather was warm.  I also played around with some of the fabric and other craft supplies I picked up last week on a spontaneous trip to JoAnn's Fabrics.  I've already started on another unexpected project I couldn't resist....

An interesting idea in the latest issue of Cloth Paper Scissors magazine caught my eye this week.  They're calling them tunnel books, but they remind me of the type of children's book that looks three-dimensional, but changes with every turn of the page.  CPS is holding another reader challenge to create a mixed-media tunnel book, and I immediately started brainstorming on all the possibilities and sketching out ideas (despite the fact that I have two other projects I need to finish before April, and at least one UFO on my worktable!).

 The article gives a quick illustration on how to make one of these by taking several pieces of cardstock and tearing or cutting openings in them that get successively smaller.  These are then decorated with a theme or shape, like the trees and hearts shown in the close-up above.  The last page doesn't have a hole and serves as the back of the book.  They're held together with a fan-folded piece of cardstock along the sides, so the pages are not turned, but you can look into the book almost like one of those cute little panoramic Easter eggs.

When I started to imagine the possibilities, one of the first things that popped into my mind was a landscape or garden scene.  After doing a few quick sketches, I quickly took off on the garden idea.  It would be so much fun to use fabrics, embroidery, beads, and all kinds of fun mixed-media supplies to create a panoramic flower garden!  At JoAnn's last week, I happened to see these appropriate wooden sticks and fence pieces, which I cut, glued and painted to make a trellis as my first frame, below.

Next I made a wire skeleton of a climbing rose and wrapped it with embroidery floss.  I painted, stamped and cut up a recycled gift bag to make the leaves, and wrapped them in as well.  I plan to make a wisteria vine growing along the right side (the vine is the gift bag handle), and use the ribbon pictured to make some of those lovely purple flowers hanging down from the top of the trellis.  But first, I'm working on making a bunch of these tiny ribbon roses so I can glue them all over my climbing plant.

Here's a close-up of the rose bush so far.  Isn't it cute?

I'm having a lot of fun with this, and I really like the way it's coming out, but it already seems to be progressing very slowly.  I have several layers to go and I hope I can sustain the energy and enthusiasm to get them done quickly so I can get on to the other two projects that also have deadlines.  The good news is Thursday is my scheduled day off, and I don't have to be at the library this weekend, so I hope I can get in some time over the next four days.  Yay!