Nightmares and Dreamscapes

I recently worked in RedDog Scott's Nightmares and Dreamscapes (yes she was inspired by the totally excellent short story collection by Stephen King) journal for this long running, overdue and overwrought collaborative swap that we're in together. (no I don't have my book back yet either!) For her journal to have been gone for a year now, travelling around from artist to artist, and having so little art in it didn't seem right! Lots of the artists did one page (not a two page spread), or no page. Sheesh! There is only one more person in the chain from me to her, so I did three spreads to make up for the lack of art she'll be receiving back. Hope she likes it!

Note: All pictures are clickable to enlarge the view!

This first one I called, "Calling All Angels", the background is a stamp that I carved, stamped with black ink (which looks rather grey, may need to reink that stamp pad!), the handmade paper is actually a deep purple on the lower left side of the page, on top of that is a playing card from the nekkid deck (The Nude in Art published by Spanish company,Fournier)a painting of "Death and the Young Maiden", some doodles, some journalling about calling on angels to help you sleep through the night when you are worried.

This is the right hand page, which has the same stamp and ink utilized, some more journaling, and a mini quilt with a stone angel photo transparency attached to the page with mini brads.

A detail of the mini-quilt. I used a lot of decorative stitching around the edges, and purposefully frayed the edges of the fabric.

The next two-page spread is called "Dream Fragments", Another stamp I made (using the leftover rubber pieces from trimming a sheet of rubber stamps, adhered to a clear plastic block with rubber cement!), stamped in purple, over painted with watercolor crayons in brown , orange and yellow. Another playing card from the nekkid deck, this time surmounted by thread, batting and glitter. Don't you have fragmented dreams like this? I know I do, stuff is hanging over me, people are watching me, yikes! No wonder I wake up.

The right-hand page, with the same stamp, glittery trails (to represnt stardust), a cool silvery star sticker (I have no good star rubber stamps), a goddess figure stamped repeatedly and surrounded with the word Sleep in different fonts and sizes (I cut these out of the yellow pages that I use for a glue workspace).

Here is a detail of the wordy stamp (from Stampin'Up) that says: "What each of us becomes is fashioned from the stardust of our dreams."

A detail of the trio of goddesses with sleep words and star sticker.
Now onto a nightmare page, same background stamp used as previous page, just overlapping and with more than one color, watercolor crayons over that, a magazine picture collage, some smeary scary writing.
And the facing page is all about Edgar Allan Poe. This one has a little glitter too, some more magazine pics, origami paper, watercolor crayons and same stamping. Here is the alternate view with the book in the pocket. The illustration with the hand with an eye in the palm and ears on each finger is an advertisement for speakers or something like that, but it reminded me of the nightmarish creature in the movie Pan's Labyrinth which totally freaked me out.
In one of my more recent thrifting finds, I had a small book with famous poems, one of which is The Raven, so I ripped that section out and sewed it up the side as a binding and inserted in the pocket. I was into listening to Garrison Keillor read it on Prairie Home Companion on their Halloween show this year. Spoooooooky! Oh and speaking of Poe, I heard on Halloween on NPR, that two Poe historical museums in Baltimore and Philadelphia are fighting over his body (gruesome, eh?!)