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!

Snippets of Making

I've already started working on the list for next week's List-it Tuesday--the topic is "creative things I could do in 15 minutes or less," and since most of the creative things I do are slotted into small pockets of time, this is perfect. You don't have to make a colorful, artsy list to participate, either. You can post a hand-written list or type it right into the blog post. I'm guessing lots of people who visit this blog are familiar with the concept of making use of the odd quarter-hour here and there. Perhaps you'll join in next week?

And of course I mention this because it leads right into what I'm posting about--some snippets of making that I've been able to do lately; the fact that I've gotten some creative play recently is helping my mood tremendously. Sunday afternoon I got in some sewing, just two more zippered pouches that were already cut and pinned, but it's amazing how much just the act of sewing them up made me feel so much more like myself. One was for my daughter, the long-promised pencil pouch, and the other hasn't reached its destination yet, but I'll be sure to share some pictures of it when it does.

I also created a handmade card this week. I started by layering some collage and paint on a 9x12" piece of Bristol board. Then I cut it into four pieces and added to one of the pieces to make my card (not shown). Here are the other three pieces, waiting to be worked into at some point and turned into more cards.

Also this week I borrowed the Artist's Journal Workshop from the library. I saw Jodi's review and immediately requested it through inter-library loan. It's a fantastic, inspiring book. I would love to create spreads like the ones shown in the book. The thing with drawing, though, is you only get better at drawing by...drawing. So I've been trying to sit down and draw.

That's the spray bottle that I use for artsy/crafty things. It's usually on the ironing board or the art table, and last night it was on the art table, so I drew it. The bottom is off--that curve on the left? all wrong. But how do you get better at drawing? By drawing. And oooh, do you see the date stamp at the top right? I can't explain why I wanted one so badly, but I did, and it turns out they cost less than $5 at Staples. Satisfying a want for less than $5 is pretty sweet.

Feeling prickly is a fairly good indicator that something is out of whack, and what's been out of whack is filling my well with some creative time. So, into the tiny slots of time it goes--a quick sketch, a layer of paint, whatever I can manage. It's that important.

Postcards Inspired By The Lake {Give-Away}

{Comments are now closed. Thank you all for your kind words and your interest! I'll be back in a day or two to announce the winners.}

When I came home from Squam, I wanted to send out a few thank-you notes. (I am a big fan of thank-you notes.) It seemed obvious that I'd make them. I wish I had photos of the process, but it's more like these grew, not that I created them, and I just never thought to photograph anything. I worked on them in bits and pieces, first cutting up some cereal boxes, then applying gesso to cover the pre-existing design, and then a coat of white acrylic paint. Then I began to play. I made eight total; here's five of them before I mailed them out.

I mixed some green, for the green of the lake. I added some texture with bubble wrap and a few circle prints in darker blue. Then I selected some of the photos I took and layered them with a painted frame. Finally, I used the birch leaf stamp I'd carved. The woods were full of birches, and while I do see them around here, I don't see that many of them, and I wanted to capture their presence on these cards. (You can click to make the photo bigger.)

I liked these so much, I wanted more of them. So I scanned three of them in and ordered some Moo postcards. Scanning them in allowed for the texture to really come through, but I wonder if using a photograph wouldn't have worked better in some ways. But I'm not sure my camera is good enough to capture a full-screen image for this purpose, without shadows getting in the way. Obviously, some more experimentation might be in order. But still, I love these postcards, too. Here's a close-up of one of them:

I wanted to send something along to my cabin mates as a souvenir of Squam and our cabin (in the top postcard's photograph, below). One woman in our cabin had made up little treat bags for all of us, with a notebook and pen and buttons (buttons!!). I wanted to reciprocate and to bookend that, in a way, so I made up a set of postcards for everyone. (The brown with the leaf print is the envelope to hold them.)

And here's the give-away part...I have two sets left over. Whether you've been to Squam, want to go to Squam, have admired it from afar, or just like to have pretty postcards (hopefully you think they're pretty) to send to your friends, leave a comment for a chance to win (two people will receive one set each). You can live anywhere in the world, as long as you have a mailing address, and you need to either make sure your contact email is in your profile, or leave it in your comment. I'll close comments in a week, 7 pm EST on Tuesday, July 3, and choose via the good old "pull a name out of a hat" method. Each set contains six postcards, two of each design.

I would love it if you'd also tell me...who was the last person you sent honest-to-goodness fun snail mail to? Besides mailing out these packages of postcards, my last fun mail was sent to my sister--I sent her one of the remaining original postcards.

Small Things in Various Stages of Completion

Thanks for all your kind words on the circles embroidery for the 4x6 exchange. I sent it off yesterday with an extra stamp and a note explaining why (I heard back from the Art House Co-op folks and that's what they said to do). I wonder what I'll receive in return?

I have been falling short left, right, and center in my solo parenting role this week. I sort of hoped, after ten years at this job, I'd be better at it. In between meltdowns (mine and my children's), I've done a little creative work here and there. First, I decided I wanted some interesting, handmade note cards on hand for when I send off a package and want to include a note. Nothing crazy difficult to make...I just wanted to play around.

My kids have been spraying canvases with liquid watercolors, so I started by spraying red, yellow, and blue watercolors on a sheet of watercolor paper. I did them one after the other, so the colors blended quite a bit. When the paper was dry, I dropped on some black ink with a dropper and then tilted the paper so it ran in spots. When that dried, I brushed on some gesso here and there with a wide brush. I haven't played with gesso at all, really, and want to figure out what I can do with it.  Then I sliced up the paper into six 4"x6" pieces and printed them sparingly with circles and purple acrylic paint. Some are bubble wrap prints, some a small cork (the kind you can buy in a craft store--so smaller than a wine bottle cork), and some the end of a plastic tube. Fun.

Above is a second Baby Yours sweater in progress, and the embroidery that distracted me from working much on the sweater. After much consideration of other patterns, I eventually decided to go ahead and make another Baby Yours, but modify it to eliminate what I don't like about the pattern. This should be easy enough, given I've already knit it once. The embroidery is on a piece of fabric I printed, and it's Irish Moss (ETA: a type of seaweed) in progress. (I've shown it before as a stamp.) Since I didn't have the energy to post this the same day I took that photo, I get to show you the finished embroidery, too. (The sweater looks about the same, though.)

I'm going to finish this one similarly to the circles and I think it will be my contribution to the local gallery's 4"x6" fundraiser.

A note on trying to transfer the drawing onto the printed fabric...I tried to use stabilizer, because it's certainly easier to see a transferred pattern on a white background. But I really don't like stitching through paper into fabric. So I started over and used an iron-transfer pen instead. If you click on the in-progress photo to make it a little bigger, you might be able to see how faint the lines are in some places. They just don't show up well on blue/green textile ink. I kept the original nearby to consult when necessary and fudged just a little bit. But since it's my drawing to begin with, and I know Irish Moss quite well, it all worked out in the end.

I'm linking up with the folks at creative spaces and am kind of surprised I managed to join in this week!

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!

Valentine Banner

The kids and I collaborated on this month's seasonal window hanging. The full story on how we made it is over on my kids/art blog (as you can tell, because I was too lazy to change the name stamp on the pictures to this blog name). It involved paint, and more paint, and paper bags, and glue...

...and it is just so cheery. I admit, I'd been sort of proprietary of that window space, really enjoying decorating it and surprising my kids, but I also really enjoy looking at this Valentine heart, love-filled collaboration that will liven up our dining room all month long.

Since cutting out hearts is (just) a bit beyond my youngest's scissor skills right now, we gave her the scraps and a heart hole punch, and I made this sweet little hanging string of hearts that decorates the doorway at the top of the stairs, into the kitchen.

And this pretty much represents the sum total of weekend creating, and I'm amazed we managed this much. We had one kid in the ER Friday night, another at the pediatrician's bright and early Saturday morning, three separate trips to the pharmacy for prescriptions, and we parents were so exhausted we spent a goodly part of the weekend staring dumbly, trying to remember what we maybe had been going to say, again? Some weekends are like that.

But we have hearts. And I love 'em.

(This project was part of TinkerLab's latest creative challenge, using paper bags. If you're interested, all the information can be found on Rachelle's blog.)

A Forest of Holiday Cards

Holiday cards--hand-carved stamp

 Last week I carved a couple of tree stamps. I decided this one would be perfect for the front of this year's card. Usually I order photo cards but this year I just don't feel like it. For my own amusement, I added a salamander to the back of each card.

This is the other tree stamp. (Oh, the shadowy taken-at-night photo!!) I think it will work nicely on a gift tag or plain brown wrapping.

These were carved from sketches, rather quickly, last week when I was feeling prickly and needed to sit quietly by myself and make something--and my three-year-old, thankfully, cooperated with that plan.

What are you planning for holiday cards this year?

(You can see lots more creative folk here!)