Sunday, August 28, 2011

One Christmas Card at a Time

I've been watercolouring a few more Christmas cards, and I'll get them all done one card at a time, I guess! I'm sorry I can't give stamp credits for all of these stamps - my sister kindly sent some stamped images that I've been using.


DSCN2531


DSCN2533


DSCN2534


DSCN2529

Friday, August 26, 2011

Paper Mosaics

Cleaning up my desk of red bird scraps from my earlier project, I decided to make a few paper mosaics. They're easy and fun!


DSCN2526

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Love, Hope, and Optimism

Earlier this week, Canada lost a great man to cancer.  Jack Layton was the leader of our opposition party in parliament and his are big shoes to fill.  The country is in shock.

In the days before he died, Jack wrote a letter to Canadians, and these words have become beacons of light for us in this difficult time.

Here is my journal tribute to a great man:

DSCN2553-1

Monday, August 22, 2011

New Challenge Blog

There is a new challenge blog on the net that appeals to me for its name (Art With No Boundaries), theme and the beautiful art work I've seen so far: http://www.artwithnoboundaries.blogspot.com/. It is simply a way to share art work created around a theme, and they have even let me use some art I didn't create originally for this challenge!


The current theme is Ocean, Aquatic, Nautical, and I made this Artist Trading Card recently using some salt and watercolour backgrounds:


Why not give it a try?













Thursday, August 18, 2011

A Variety of Vintage ATC's

These artist trading cards were made for the Vintage Collage swap.  Now that they are all swapped out you can see too!

DSCN2410

DSCN2412

DSCN2411

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Red Bird Puzzles

Two of the themes for the Vancouver Artist Trading Card Group for August are birds and the colour red. 

DSCN2517

DSCN2519

DSCN2520

I didn't have a vision of the finished cards when I made these.  But I had to start somewhere!  So, the process went something like this:

  1. I grabbed all the interesting red paper I could find (some purchased, some hand decorated) , and cut it into ATC sized pieces.
  2. I hunted down three ATC sized bird themed rubber stamps; these ones are from I Brake for Stamps and Inkadinkado.
  3. I looked at the paper and decided which stamps would look best on which papers.  Stamp away!
  4. Then I was stumped.  (I couldn't just mount these on ATC bases, it seemed too easy.)  So, they sat around for a few days.
  5. You may have noticed that I have a weakness for grids and inchies, so the idea struck to cut these into inchies, mix them up, and reassemble them like puzzles.  I did sort the paper by weight so that the lighter weight papers were together and the heavier weight papers were together.
  6. I couldn't resist finishing them off with a bit of stitching.

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Fruits of the Season

I love to play with stamps depicting the bounties of the season. In BC, our pears are in season beginning in August, right through April, a-pear-ently!


DSCN2523


And if you look carefully, there is stitching on some of those pears.


Have a wonderful week, everyone!


Friday, August 12, 2011

Simplicity Inspires Again

Simplicity is a blog I look at frequently for inspiration.  Susan has a fantastic style that is summed up by her blog byline:  "Style is a very simple way of saying complicated things."  This Artist Trading Card was inspired by a card I saw on Susan's blog.

DSCN2516

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

One Layer Black and White

This started out as a Thank You card for a nice lady at my local stamp club who gave me these wonderful alphabet stamps and a set of "doodles".  (See the photo hinge I turned into an exclamation mark?) 

I mounted the letters on a large acrylic block, and made many prototypes before I got something I liked.  Then I made a few extras for swap cards for the ladies at the club.  One layer cards are hard to get right, but easy to execute once you like the design.

DSCN2505