Mythological Creatures Swap

So, last month for my collageATCs group, we did mythological creatures. It was fun to see everyone's interpretation of the theme, here are my cards:

I like tags, can't you tell. In the left picture I used all the fairies , the card is just paper with layered paper at the bottom using some decorative scissors I got for Christmas last year. The tags are ones I had in my stash, the one on the left is chipboard the other two are just plain paper. They're all attached with jeweled brads.

The card on the right I used the mermaid. I took a manila colored tag and pressed it into Stampin Up Classic Stamp pads of Ballet Blue and Green Galore. The background is when I did a bunch of backgrounds with some spray mists and added random stamps to them.

Lots of times in the swap items, I send out items that have white around the image, seems to happen a lot with stickers, and that white stuff drives me nuts, I always have to trim it off.

The card on the left I used the cupid, you can kinda tell from the picture, that he's stuck on something, he was a window cling on some clear plastic, other people had used the cupid, and he had a hard time being stuck down, so I decided to just leave him on the plastic (as he was pretty well stuck to that), and I added the love tag with a jeweled brad and the rose in the bottom corner.
The card on the right I used the witch and the frame she's in. The frame was around another item that looked like a bunny with wings and antenna, it was a stamp my mom bought in Mexico. The background is from when I was making backgrounds one time and painted it with metallic paints and then added stamps, the gold piece is just a piece of vellum.

The card on the left I used the fairy, it's a stamp I bought through Stampin' Up, and in the stamped image, she had some kind of fairy dust trailing along behind her, so I added blue glitter glue and some ancient gold embossing powder, that you can't really see in the picture. Someone else in the group used a mermaid stamp that had her hands outstretched with a shell in it. I thought the plastic lyre would fit perfectly with the music paper in the background.
The card on the right I used the dragon image, I had the Asian character stamp, and stamped it in the ancient gold embossing powder, then glued the dragon onto a tag and lightly covered it with gold paint.

The card on the left I used the kokopelli, I just added the sun punch and the sun stamp, both from previous swaps.
The card on the right I used the mermaid. She was stamped in black on white paper and had a comb in one hand and a mirror in the other, I didn't like those so I took them out. Her hair is colored with some orange glitter glue, her body is colored with chalk as well as her tail. Her shells are colored with some aqua paint (that took way too long to dry) that I picked up on clearance at Hobby Lobby. I had the water paper in a paper stack, and added the sand (from our back porch waiting for winter) and the tiny shells that I acquired on a vacation.

The card on the left I used the angel image, you can't tell very well from the picture, but I stamped another angel on top of the one I had and embossed the halo and wings with the ancient gold embossing powder. The background is a gold patterned piece of paper with mica flakes glued on top.
The card on the right I used the phoenix and the feathers. A phoenix is a bird that rises from the ashes, so I cut a flame out of a metallic piece of paper I received from one of the members of by group and added the orange glitter glue to it and some extra flames. I really liked this one.

Chunky House Swap

In one of my Yahoo! Groups, I signed up to do a Chunky House and Charm Swap. It entails decorating a chipboard house and creating 5 charms to go with it. Here is my (almost) finished house:
I chose an underwater theme. The background is covered with pieces of ripped book pages and then painted with a mixture of Pearl Emerald Green and Pearl Blue Lumiere paints. After painting it, it took me so long to actually do the rest of the house. I finally sat down on Sunday and started on it. The bottom is covered with small spiral shells someone sent me. I painted seaweed in (I'm guessing, as I don't have the paint here in front of me) Pearl Purple Lumiere paint. The shell and starfish sticker in the corner came from a sticker sheet I bought at Hobby Lobby. The mermaid is a stamped image that someone from my CollageATCs group sent me for our Mythological Creatures swap, I colored it with chalks and added some "shells" to cover her up. The gold fish is actually a clear plastic fish that I painted the back with gold pain. I then added "under the sea" with green and blue glitter glue.

Since deciding on this theme, I envisioned adding a shell on the back that opened up with the information from the swap printed inside. I first painted the back with white craft pain and then added a thinned out mix of the same blue and green paints as the front. In real life it looks a lot more green than blue. I added some sand (from the pail on the back porch for winter sidewalks) to the bottom. I searched Microsoft Word clip art for shells and found the one I used, all I did was print it out, glue it on some blue cardstock that I folded in half. When it's opened I have the name of the swap, the hostess' name, the name of the piece, the date and my name printed in it. I also added the purple startfish button to the corner and a sparkly dolphin sticker on the top.

To me, the back is way too flat, but I'm not sure what else to add to it.

Other than the flatness of the back (which I'm planning on changing), I love this project. I still have to figure out what to do for my five charms, but I'm sure they'll come out just as cute.