I Dream In Colors

Time out from my Key Largo posts.  I just completed pages for Jen's journal in our I Dream in Colors group.  Her color palette is chocolate brown, robin's egg blue, and lilac.
Not my usual colors (except for the brown, which I believe goes with everything), but had fun with it, and guess what?  Those who know me well won't believe it, but I sewed on it!  Me, sewing!
I have disliked sewing but love the look of stitches on paper, so a few weeks ago I went ahead and bought a basic machine and put it in a closet.
Something made me take it out yesterday.  I just knew it would end with much tears and cursing, but miracle of miracles, it really was as easy to thread as promised.  Can't believe it!  Not that I did anything elaborate, just some freehand stitching and attaching ribbon, but this is a very big deal for me.  I've always believed that I am totally incapable of using a sewing machine.  Yea, me!
Anyway, here is the first of the two page spread:

I used some of Tim Holtz's gorgeous new paper.  It's the right shade of blue, and I overpainted it in some areas with lilac paint.  I used the bracket from Tim's "Hanging Sign" die as the holder for the cage from his "Caged Bird" die.  I didn't use the bird from that die.  The smaller one is a stamp, inked and stickled.  The larger one is from the "Nature" grungeboard set.  I used Val's inlaid embossing technique on it.  Covered it with light purple embossing powder, then used a floral background stamp (Wendy Vecchi) over top, embossed with blue powder.

The second page is the one where I really tried out the sewing machine:

I LOVE Tim's "Fanciful Flight" die.  That butterfly is great, isn't it?  I put blue vellum under the chocolate card stock outline.

I chose the words I used, after searching for hours for a suitable quote about flying, because of the word "fairy."  If you read my post yesterday about the retreat, you know that each night we were visited by the pillow fairies (aka Gina and Marita).  I thought that whenever Jen looked at these pages she'd also be reminded of our wonderful days together in Key Largo.

Jen included some tags with her journal for us to use as a sign in.  She asked that we include a photo of ourselves.  I found a vintage NYC postcard, (well, a reproduction) Bethesda Fountain in Central Park in the 40's (I think), and used that as my base.  Here it is:

And no, I did not make up that corny caption.  It was actually on the bottom of the postcard!