Fleur de Ashley I & II

Last November, my sister asked me to make her a collage. So I started in December, even worked on it while she was visiting over Christmas! Well, finally I finished them, framed them, and shipped them, just a few days late for her birthday!

If you refer back to my blog post about the new table, you can just slightly see the piece in its first stage of life! Below are close-ups of each one in its final stage. They are sister collages, and can be displayed separately or apart. Click on the photos for a closer view.

It's hard to pick a favorite of the two. But one of my favorite places is the lower right corner of the second one: the yellow and pink shading over the list and the old advertisement, and the photo of the dog popping out over it.

Below you can see how they looked before I framed them. The collages are mounted onto quarter-inch plywood covered in pecan, which is what makes the stripes. We treated the wood with tung oil before mounting the collages.

I was inspired by a flower I saw in a piece of fabric I'd used in another project, and to make the piece a little less busy and more focused, I used the flower as a centerpiece. It helps bring all the colors of the various components of the collage together. Components include an interior paint sample card, picture and article cut-outs from a catalog and a magazine, two photos Ashley herself took, buttons, paper flowers, a doily, pattern paper, butterfly ribbon, felt flowers, a page from a dictionary, and some quotes that seem to fit Ash's personality.

You guessed it! Here are photos of the collage in her house!

And to give it a little scale, the final product with the artist. :)