Italian Villa

The June color prompt for Arts in the Cards ATC group is "Italian Villa". I've never been to Italy but my mother's parents were Sicilian farmers and I grew up with a very loving Italian  "Gramma" and many aunts and uncles (10 of them!).  All of my visions of Italian are from photos, movies and books. Golden hills, little villages, mediterranean  coast, vineyards, villas and beautiful churches and a culture seeped in Catholicism.

I painted a textured wallpaper sample to resemble sun washed stucco. From my collection of old books, I tore pages from an Italian prayer missal.I had lots of paper that were samples from a class I took with Albie Smith where we used paper paste paint, creating treasures of paper that had an "old world" look, and tore it into strips of deep purple. I finished by stitching with linen thread around the  cruciform  design.  The next step is to take a trip to Italy!