Adding to the backgrounds...

Yesterday I showed the backgrounds waiting to be added to.  Luckily, I had lots of time to do some art in the morning (I decided to skip going swimming with the kids) so I managed to work on those background, plus the three more which arrived in the post today!  To to brown background with hessian "grass" I added some birds.

And to the black and white backgrounds, I added some words (a different word on each card) and some coloured gemstones

I got these backgrounds - sort of vintage ad reproductions:

And to them, I added some pictures of vintage couples, using some rusted paper as mini backgrounds.

I also got a set of little red watercoloured flowers, which stumped me for a while (I'm not good at drawing, so I couldn't just add some leaves or stems or butterflies or something)

In the end, I went down a totally different track, and cut a very thin border from a piece of red fuzzy material and added a tiny bit of vintage lace. I'll be interested to see what player three does!  All of these cards are ones which need to go to a third player to be finished, so room needs to be left for someone else to work.

And finally, a card on which I was to be third player. This is a card I admired when the first person posted them - it was just the birds at that point - and the second player said she'd send them to me. Which is great. Except that I can't really draw or paint, as I've mentioned before, so I was a bit nervous about working on them.  They are so delicate, I didn't want to do anything which would overwhelm them. 

Here's what I chose to do in the end - tiny paper leaves, from a hand-made paper (not by me) with leaves in it, and a label of the name of the bird. All three cards have the same bird, though they are slightly different in shape. And all three branches are slightly different in shape, so the leaf placement is different on each card.

I think they are really sweet!

It's a great challenge working on a card as part of the finished product instead of just making one from scratch, but what you end up with can be really interesting and lovely.  If I remember, I'll try to update all the cards I was second player on, when I get them back after the third player has worked on them!