Monday, January 14, 2013

Blue in the Mail

These are finally on their way to Karen for the Mail Me Some Art Blue Postcard Swap. I've been meaning to join one of her swaps since she began them. It took me a while...on the plus side, I am so pleased with these four cards. They were fun to make, and I think I've improved quite a bit since my first postcard swap. The "rule" for this swap, as you might have guessed, was to use blue. A bit of contrast is okay, but mainly, we're looking at blue. Why blue? Karen also lives in New England. Have you visited New England in January? It can lend itself to the blues, if you catch my meaning. So.

These four began as one 9x12" sheet of Bristol board, collaged and painted. Then I sliced it into four pieces and added more collage pieces individually. Here's the first:

 I added the circles of text and the ghostly image on the right-hand side. It's a cut-out ghost sunprint of a skate egg case, but it kind of reminds me of someone with their hands over their head.


To this second one, I just added some washi tape, a strip of text painted blue, and a blue circle sticker. One of my kids was given a game for Christmas that had stickers that needed to be applied, and there was lots of leftover background sticker on the sheet, so I saved it to cut shapes out of.


I really like this third one. Those are more sunprints, cut out and glued on.


And the final one has this little girl in a blue-checked dress, cut out from a vintage sewing pattern envelope.

I really like beginning with something larger and then cutting it down, because I enjoy the found compositions in the smaller pieces. They each become their own little world that I can work into in various ways.

The swap is open for another week, if you're interested in joining in--the postmark day is January 21.

6 comments:

Karen Isaacson said...

the sunprints are such a great element, and YES that skate egg case does look like a person. I love that. so glad you decided to join. and really, I'm glad you joined that first swap or we never would have met!

Bells said...

i can see that there's a really enjoyable process in making these and that the results are so pleasing. The different blues, the little details - just lovely!

Cameron said...

Karen is great...and these postcards are fantastic....love the skate egg case....have a fondness for their moniker "Mermaid's purse" :)

Donna Lee said...

I love the one with the little girl. It is so reminiscent of paging through pattern books looking for something to sew. It brings back good memories.

Blue is an interesting theme for January in the Northeast. Everything around here is naked and grey. I think I'd like to see some yellow or orange to balance things out.

Jill said...

Do I recognize the text circles in the first one from one of EG's books? The romance of elastic webbing perhaps? You let me know if you need more ephemera. We may be heading to another book purge.

Terrie said...

I received one of your gorgeous blue cards! I got the leaf sunprint one and just love it. And, I've enjoyed browsing your site...your stitching projects are truly amazing! Thanks for the card and I hope to see more of your work in future swaps!