Music in the Trees Page

I posted a very small slice of this photo as my tease for Ruth, back in April. The comments and the attention of the viewers was the combination of the bit of sheet music that was included in the background of fabric/paper with the tree leaf bits. I took those comments to heart and began to look for additional elements for the page. I always put sheet music in my collage work, but as Ruth was really intrigued by the combo of tree's and music, I saw the potential for the page in a whole new light.
So...... to begin, I chose a piece of my fabric/paper collage material as my starting point. I had recently carved a new stamp of a tree, partly with this page for Ruth, in mind. I stamped the tree with Staz-On Ink on a piece of white tissue paper and collaged it over the top of the fabric/paper. With a good coat of matte medium both beneath and on otp of the white tissue stamping, when completely dry the white tissue becomes very nearly transparent. I knew that the page needed some dimension so I took a large scrap of green leaf fabric and cut it in half and sandwiched a piece of Misty Fuse interfacing between the two pieces of scrap. I now had double sided fabric and I cut tiny leaf shapes from that bit. I stitched each leaf to the page using a green seed bead to embellish the leaf . The leaf is only attatched at one end so there is some movement and dimension to each leaf. On the border, after adding a cording edge, I stitched leaves in the same manner, with the seed bead addition.
I went in search of a quote to add to the front of the page and had a distant vague memory of hearing things about music among the trees, etc, in the past. I quickly found this wonderful quote that reads: There is always music amongst the trees in the garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear. Perfect, don't you think?? I wrote the quote out by hand aon a bit of my hand dyed linen and stitched it down again using seed beads to embellish the stitches. (can you tell I love to stitch with beads???)

For the back I selected a piece of my Flour Paste Resist Dyed Fabric in green (to read about how this technique works ,go to this link) and stamped one of my favorite tree stamps using Brown Staz-on ink, directly onto the fabric. As the stamping was quite a bit less strong than I had hoped, I used a brown Pit Pen to draw in over the stamping to make the tree come alive. The faint stamping was thus pushed into the bckground and the tree took on even more dimension than the stamping alone would have conveyed. ( as the saying goes,"When you get lemons, make lemonade!!!" I might actually do this again on purpose!!!) I was very happy with the result!!!

If anyone has any questions about how I did something, please feel free to give me a holler either directly or hear in the comments section. Iwill check back in on the comments every once in awhile!

iIhope that everyone has very satisfying and creative week!!!