Ireland Collage on Burlap

This is a work-in-progress. There is still quite a bit of embellishing to go but the piece is heading in the right direction. I've used burlap as a base ground. The landscape scene is a waterfall  in Muckross, Kerry County, Ireland. I know in this area, much magic must take place! I could have spent the day by this waterfall in search of fairies.  I wanted the water to extend into the border trims.

I've used French wire-edge ribbon, bits of brown organza fabric cut from a

1920's flapper dress, rhinestone sections of another flapper gown, a brown velvet flower from a 1950's hat and filling in with vintage Czech beads and  a brass finding.

I scanned the image onto cotton poplin. I do not use silk fabric for scanning images. My experience has been to see accelerated fading on silk fabric when printing with ink jet printers.

 I used a double-sided fusible and fused the cotton image to the center of the burlap. I  then basted pieces of doupioni silk to the edges of the image. I want the doupioni fabric edges to fray. The fraying adds to the texture of the piece. Then I began to layer the border of the image with wire-edge ribbon, scrunched velvet fabric and the flapper gown bits.