A friend is someone who will do a personal art exchange with you, hee hee! My good friend, Frieda Oxenham and I have been exchanging our art and our thoughts since 2005. We've never met in person yet because we live across the ocean, but we've developed a good friendship through our many exchanges. Two of the groups we were exchanging small works of art with recently wrapped up their exchanges. I felt bereft in not having Frieda's art and her snail mail letters in my hands on a regular basis. She is very busy and involved with both her award winning art quilting and her mixed media art but we figured a loose, open exchange with a long response time might work for us. I decided to start with an ATC for her and made myself one as well (similar, but different) as a mirror of what I created for her that I would keep. Frieda has received her ATC now, so I will share both with you! Click for details.

Frieda's ATC is on the left - the one I made for myself is on the right. Frieda's has a "friend" rubber stamp on it that is quite correct! For this small ATC I wanted to use one of Frieda's favorite colours, yellow. I reached for a piece of "fabric paper" that I created two years ago. I attempted such a large piece of fabric for this project, I have plenty leftover!! This was not planned when creating my ATC for Frieda, but so appropriate because it was Frieda who taught me how to make fabric paper in the first place!

I ran an ATC size card through my xyron adhesive system and then pressed the fabric paper onto the card. I used a strip of yellow fabric with an additional piece of fabric paper on top and attached it to the card by beading tiny seed beads onto the card. This type of beading is what I would call a "signature" of Frieda's fabric art. i was trying to create something that would make her smile!!

Then I got Frieda's latest letter out, sat down, read it and composed my response.

Mail art for Frieda, who always appreciates it! 

'Till next time!! 

Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.

  ~ Vincent van Gogh