HAPPY EASTER (With apologies to Beatrix Potter)

Hello everyone and a very happy Easter to you all! And for those of you who don't celebrate it, happy spring time!

I really wanted to wish all of my amazing followers and friends a happy time today, and as I have no other project that I can share right now, I'll show something that I would not normally blog about....

It's one of my grand daughter's first birthday soon and I thought it might be a good idea to make something for her big sister (who is 2.5) also, just so she can share in the festivities....
My daughter in law requested a set of coasters and place mats so they can play (and learn) at setting the table.
Well, I could not refuse that, so here you are, a set of coasters with (more or less) matching place mats, using some of the wonderful Nicecrane images I still had in my collection from the time I was on his design team.

The illustrations are of course by Beatrix Potter, but Nicecrane has a number of collections using these images.

The coasters are all altered beer mats, using his ATC collections.

I printed them on mat photo paper in their original size, glued them onto the beer mats and then used gesso, paints, stamps and stencils to blend them onto the beer mats. This was actually quite tricky as the beer mats are of course a different size.

I am quite happy with how the original photo paper has all but disappeared into the background, just by adding some colour and extending some of the images, like this tree branch.

I also added some shadows around the images to make them stand out a bit against their backgrounds.

I added card to the back of them and then sealed both sides with American Triple Gloss Glaze.

For the place mats, (which are just slightly smaller that A4) I used a different technique. The images are pngs also from Nicecrane and I created them with digital backgrounds and them simply printed them on mat photo paper, backed them with card and then laminated them.

The backgrounds were created with a mix of elements from my digital collection and some photoshop brushes etc. I don't create digitally very often, but when I do, I actually quite enjoy it.

For this background I used elements from Nicecrane's Edwardian Ladies collection. When gluing it onto it's backing card I made a mess, so I had to add some paint also to sort it out a bit....

And here is the last one, Benjamin Bunny going for a stroll in another Edwardian Ladies background....

I feel a bit bad tampering with Beatrix Potter's beautiful paintings like this, but as they were from Nicecrane originally and he must have done his copyright work, I presumed it would be alright.

Well, I hope you will have a wonderful Sunday, however you spend it. Thanks so much for all your support and I'll see you somewhere in blogland soon no doubt.