Green Postcards

Karen's latest monochromatic postcard swap is focusing on the color green. Last night, I carved a stamp inspired by the painted silk scarf at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. (I talk about the scarf in the last post.) I decided I wanted the print to be the outlines of the drawing, to most closely resemble the print on the scarf. This, or course, was the most laborious decision I could have made as far as carving the stamp goes. Whatever. That's what I wanted.

It took about two hours to carve the stamp, and towards the end I was getting a little lost...I just kept my eyes on the pencil lines on the carving block and trusted those to be my guide. I am utterly delighted with the finished stamp.

Here's a finished postcard--I made four in the series. (I even numbered them.)

On the back, I explained the inspiration for the print. These are, as my 8yo pointed out, much simpler than my previous postcards (blue and yellow). The background is green watercolor, left to dry with some plastic wrap on top to create some texture. The stamp is printed in dark green acrylic, and I painted the border.

It's not just the finished cards that please me, or the stamp, although I really do love it all. It's that this is a direct result of getting to visit an art museum on Monday. I was inspired, and that is such a good feeling.

Yellow Postcards

When I realized on Thursday that we'd be spending the next several days at home, I made a list of Things To Get Done During This Storm. I've been using the sticky note program on my laptop, and that sticky note is gone--I did everything on my list. That means I have some things to blog this week, starting with these sunny yellow postcards for Karen's Yellow Postcard Swap. What better color to work with as the howling winds covered everything with snow?

I call these first two my lemon ladies.

I thought about adding some text but then decided to let the recipient--and you all--fill in your own ideas. Are these women making lemonade from lemons? Are they making some snide sarcastic remark about the idea of turning lemons into lemonade? I couldn't make up my mind. What do you think?

These next two have a print of my sunny compass rose.

I made these the same way I made the blue ones--I gathered a pile of papers in the chosen color, made a larger collage/paint background, and then made the final compositions once I'd cut the larger sheet into four pieces.

Here's to sunny days ahead!

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.

AEDM2012: Day 8

Wednesday I felt a Sick coming on, so I crawled into bed around 7 pm with some tea and honey, the heating pad, and a bunch of books and knitting. I mainly ignored the books and knitting; I finished the tea and dozed on and off, crawling out of bed only to dispatch children to bed at their appointed times. I felt better on Thursday, so I suppose my proactive approach worked? But all I managed on Wednesday was a little bit of sketching.

So Thursday night, I headed downstairs to do a little daily art plus some. First, a map. I rarely go to my childhood neighborhood even in my head (never in person, anymore), but I decided to create this quick, childlike map in a sepia watercolor pencil, hoping for an old-time look.

You can click to make it bigger. If you lived in that neighborhood with me (hi, Jill!) you may not recognize what I chose to put here. The BIG HILL is of course not all that big; but it seemed that way. And I don't know if we always sledded down it--how could that be? didn't they plow streets in the 70s/early 80s?--but I remember doing it at least once. The "deep dark woods" was really just a patch of trees on a hill between streets, but I loved going there and pretending I was Far Away. The "pond" was probably just an exaggerated puddle in a swampy area, but I did fall into it once, when Michelle (whose house is at the top of the BIG HILL) dared me to walk out onto the ice, and I did. As I said, it was a puddle; I only got wet up to my knees or so when the ice broke, but the rocks--which were there as fill, because they built houses on that swamp the next year--all froze to my corduroys, and it was funny. And I marked the way to Stop & Shop because at five years old, I figured I'd have to live in my parents' neighborhood forever because at least I knew how to get to the supermarket from there.

Well. That's more childhood reminiscing than I am likely to do for the next year. And how about this --I realized a couple hours after I drew this that I signed it with my maiden initials, abc, rather than my current ones. I signed it with the initials of the person who lived there. Funny Brains.

Also last night, I made some postcards for iHanna's latest swap, which has a theme of "empowerment," which can be interpreted any number of ways. I chose simply. Here's my group of cards to choose from (we only need five):

I already had all these backgrounds ready, so it was just a matter of deciding what to do with them. I am partial to the "Grow" cards; I think I will have to keep one for myself.

 Also using the theme of trees and growth:
 

And finally, more of the compass rose from earlier in the month. It's not the best choice with these backgrounds, but I think these two hold up okay.

There's still plenty of time to sign up for the postcard swap, if you're interested--right here!

In The Mail

Lots of fun in my mailbox this week, as postcards have been arriving thanks to iHanna's DIY Postcard Swap. I've received eight so far, pictured here with the personalized wrapping Caterina used. I've left this photo a little bigger, so if you click it you should get a much better look.

Roughly top to bottom, going left to right: Caterina's "Home Sweet Home" ccollage; Vesna's "Be You" paint and washi tape collage; Yvonne's stitched fabric card; Madelene's woman card; Quinn's found poetry card; Paula's cheerful red and yellow painted card; Susan's "She loved books most of all" collage; and Chris's goddess collage. (I don't know if it's really a goddess, but it reminds me of one.) How cool are all of these? I'd love to show you close-ups of every single one, since they all have some amazing details. You can see lots of postcards in the Flickr group. I want to share the quote Madde included on the back of her card, though.

Kinda what I need to hear right now...

Also in my mailbox this week, I received my first Whimsey Box!

It's just so sweetly packaged, with a pretty postcard telling what's inside. Glue stick, stick-on magnets, Sharpies, trim, and patterned paper, which you can't see at all, so here's a better look.

Luscious, is what that is, especially with that lace and rick-rack.

Anything fun in your mailbox lately?

**

I typically try to keep background chatter off this blog, but my husband is away for the next week. This isn't an uncommon thing (although this spring has been lighter than usual), and I'm usually pretty on top of the solo parenting. I typically handle it all, with something approaching aplomb. During his last work trip, the dishwasher broke, the cat killed the TV by puking into it, and I was diagnosed with Lyme. That's a fairly typical solo parenting week, actually. However, due to non-bloggable background stuff, I'm not feeling too confident in my abilities to handle even the daily schedule on my own, never mind the random crazy. So if you'd take a minute to wish for a calm week in these parts, I'd so much appreciate it.

Postcards

I've completed the postcards for the postcard swap! So before I show them, I'll tell you that I always have a nagging feeling that whatever I make won't be good enough or up to the standards and that's a main thing that has been holding me back on this sort of thing. I signed up anyway. (I'm trying to be more open, remember?!) There are lots of small things that I wish were a bit better with these postcards, the biggest being that I tried three different types of glue/paste, the final one being the rice paste I use for bookbinding, and set them to dry under or in a big huge book (my art history book, which is great for this sort of thing), and some of them still have a curling problem. I hope it doesn't cause an issue in the mail sorting machines, and I wish I knew what to do about it.

So anyway, these are my finished postcards, in sets, and here are the papers I began with for the collages, if you want to look back. Some of them look very different once cut up!

These are more or less random collages in that I had no plan when I began and simply wanted to play with the papers and see where it led me. I think the two on the right, and the one on the bottom, are the most successful. The bottom one was created by cutting the striped paper into one-inch strips and then piecing them together, almost log-cabin style but not quite. I find the stripes much more interesting this way. Each bit becomes its own little composition. I really enjoy slicing painted papers into smaller pieces for just that reason.

I've been thinking of this next set as the "seashore set."

After these collages were dry, I stamped them, using blockprinting ink. You can see where it took me a couple of tries to realize that where the paper joins, I needed to apply a bit more pressure. I'm actually okay with this skip where it occurred though. It's proof an actual person made these, yes?

If you count, you'll see that's just nine. Going against my own wise instinct, I tried to paste too-big a piece of vellum onto one of the postcard blanks, and it curled horribly. Since I needed to make more, I decided to make extras. These four were watercolored, then block printed.

Totally abstract, and I like them quite a bit. I cut the watercolor paper to size, then used rice paste to glue the watercolor paper to the postcard blank (I'd printed these out on cardstock, so I could personalize them with the swap date, my state, and my name and blog address). Most of them didn't curl too badly. I accidentally smudged some ink on the bottom right one though, so I don't think I'll mail that one out for the swap. The stamp, by the way, was carved at a parent/child program, with a textile design as the inspiration.

So those are my postcards. I hope they hold up through the mail. I hope the recipient enjoys them. Despite my huge insecurities with this sort of thing, I went ahead and signed up for the Art House Co-op's 4x6 exchange today, so I'll be thinking on what to do for that next.

Shared with our creative spaces...such an inspiring community of bloggers!

Some other fun things around the web lately:

* I have a post on Kidoinfo on the wonders of freezer paper for the uninitiated.

* After a couple months of waiting, I received my Whimseybox invitation this month and signed up. I just think it sounds like a cool challenge and a way to explore different materials. I was pretty excited to see the invite in my inbox, and the first one should arrive, I think, while my husband is away, so perfect timing there! Fun things in the mail are always nice when I'm holding down the fort alone.

* You've probably heard about Taproot by now. I was really excited to get an email telling me that I would be receiving a free trial issue because I'm a Nova Naturals customer. I don't remember how or when I first came to Nova Naturals, but I know I only had two kids at the time. When I first saw the announcement about Taproot, the fact that Nova Naturals was involved made me more interested. I have always admired not only their products, but their philosophies and customer service (plus they're located in the only state without a coastline I'd ever want to live in, Vermont). Their catalog is so beautiful that when my daughter was a toddler, she would carry it with her everywhere. I love the toys we've purchased from them; they have a soul. Even after reading of their involvement, I was completely surprised that they'd send a trial issue. Really, these small considerations make me so happy! And I'm eagerly awaiting to see the magazine in person. (Yes, I subscribed, too..they had me at "valued customer!")

I hope your days have contained some sweet surprises as well!

Saturday In My Studio

Saturday afternoon, my {awesome} husband took the kids to the library and on other errands, while I stayed home and played in the basement studio.

First I painted.

The smaller pieces are ATCs for a project I'll talk about more another time. The larger pieces are papers for collage, with the postcard swap in mind. I started with watercolor for all of these, but I added acrylic onto the patterned papers. Here's a closer look at them.

This green one is my favorite, I think. It's green watercolor topped with dark green acrylic polka dots made by stamping a wine cork. Then I added those yellow highlights around the dots with a paintbrush.

This is one of two papers I stamped with a rectangular piece of what I think is compressed cardboard. It was used as packaging for something and I held onto it for the ridges on the long sides. I'm going to have to find more because it didn't rinse well and I'm not sure it's reusable. I used it on two of the papers.

I was curious if I could paint vellum. It curled up almost immediately! But the watercolors dried almost immediately, too, so the curling was okay. I think I'll be able to use these for collage in small pieces. The glue will hold it down.

I painted a few papers with sand and water in mind. Since I'm sending these postcards from Rhode Island, I want to include something that evokes the area, and my Rhode Island is very ocean-centered. (There is more to the state, of course, but it's the coastline that holds my heart.) All of these began with watercolor. The stripy one was painted over with acrylics, and the other three were sponge-painted with more watercolors.

When I was done painting, my husband and the kids were still out, so I carved a stamp. I already have several hand-carved stamps I may use in the postcards, but I looked at my sketches of ocean life from the summer and chose one with a clear outline to turn into a stamp. (As much as I really want a stamp of this hermit crab, I thought it would take far more time than I'm likely to have.) I decided upon Irish moss.

I need to clean up a couple of more spots. And even with the solid outline, all those branchy bits meant this took a bit of time, anyway. Still, not as much time as that hermit crab will. (I may just have to attempt it as a stamp at some point in the future.) If you're curious about carving stamps, I have a tutorial posted. It's really not that hard, it just takes patience and a steady hand.

What a wonderful gift, some uninterrupted time to play in the studio! How is your weekend going?