Embroidered Collage

This 6"x6" imaginary landscape was inspired by the papers that I used in it.  I was going through some themed collections of collage paper I purchased a couple years ago and decided to do landscapes from four of them.  I adored the swirly lace paper in this set and realized the diamond textured paper would make great mountains.  I painted the deep blue sky to go with the beiges and as a strong colored background to set off the lace paper.

I was frustrated during most of the stitching phase.  I had originally thought that portion would be more textured, but kept drawing a blank on everything but straight and cretan stitches.  The colors all kept blending in too, even though I tried to use a variety of values.  Finally I decided to throw in some blue beads and a bit of truly dark green and see what that did.  As it happened, I found these dark purple beads foiled with gold and red.  They were much more dramatic than the blue I had originally had in mind.  Adding the dark touches pulled the piece together and I breathed a sigh of relief.

I had also intended to add some straight stitches in a variegated beige to echo the diamonds in the mountains, moving down in to the prairie area, but when I reached that point it just didn't seem like they would add anything to the composition.  It looks right with the only embroidery being in the foreground.  So I stopped and wrapped the canvas to the stretcher bars.