MMSA 3 item collage swap

When Karen posted some 3 item collage post cards on her personal blog, I thought, huh, those are cool. I also thought it would be a great idea for a swap, and sure enough, Karen announced it a couple weeks ago. I sat down and started paging thru magazines, looking for likely images.

When you have only 3 items, each one is very important. They need to relate somehow, they need to tell at least a bit of a story. I knocked out the chicken in the croc's mouth in ten minutes and then spent the rest of the week coming up with the other two. So hard! I have a whole pile of rejects on my work table that I hope will be useful for something else cause I sure couldn't make them fit into a 3 item collage.

Two of my three have something coming out of - or maybe going into - a mouth. Not sure what's going on there. Prolly just means I'm always thinking about food.

This swap put me strongly in mind of the 6-word short stories. The most famous is probably, "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." I find them fascinating. If you're not familiar with them, go take a look. Then try to write one.

Still a week to get yours in the mail if you wanna play.

Yes, I cut around every one of those pointy little teeth.
Took forever.

I was going to trim off the card to clean up the torn left edge
of the elephant but then decided I liked the look.

asemic writing pt 2

Got my cards back from the MMSA swap, plus one from a friend. Asemic writing is definitely an interesting addition to a card. There's pretty much no way to do it wrong, and these cards each have their own sort of scribbles.

This one is from Carlene in TN. 

Gelli print, washi tape, patterned paper.

From J E Lichtenstein in MD.

Book text, handmade paper, paint.

This is a pretty one from Jo in Australia.

Painted paper, washi tape.

Pretty background on this one from Jan in AZ.
Love the heavy black marks on the delicate ground.

Lastly, a funny one from my longtime mailart pal Jewels in MI.
I think it's hard to see in the pic, but there are a few "bleep"s in amongst
the asemic writing as the cops have trouble figuring out their new gadgets.

MMSA round postcards

Round postcards are fun. Makes me think about the space totally differently in terms of what I want to use on it. Last year, I worked with the circles in two different ways - a round photo on one and words around the edge on the other.

This year I wasn't as inspired. Long day at work or something. I layered both cards with old text, always a good neutral start. Leafed thru my old pics until I found this round baby, cut him in a circle and layered him on torn circles of dress pattern tissue and a used tea bag. When I came back to it, I did some pen work which led to the pic looking like a flower, which led me to the flower child caption. So simple is my thought process.

Decided to use stamps on the other one, and as I was sifting thru them, I kept coming to vehicles of various types. It wasn't much of a mental leap to planes, trains and automobiles. But I think the actual movie title is Trains, Plains and Automobiles, right? So I'm out of order. What a surprise.

MMSA mixed media ATCs

The ATCs mentioned in the previous post. These already had background on them, so I worked on adding at least two more techniques and creating some sort of interesting collage. I haven't made ATCs in a while and was struck again, as I always am, at what a perfect art form they are. Compact, doable in a short amount of time, just enough space to tell a little story.

MMSA paint chip postcards

Rhonda came down on Sunday and we worked on making stuff for two upcoming MMSA swaps - paint chip postcards and mixed media ATCs. She brought a pile of paint chips but I sat and looked at a blank postcard for 5 minutes with zero ideas. Finally got out some that already had a background on them and then it clicked. Two have stencil and spray ink backgrounds, one is a gelli print, and one is strips of gelli prints. I managed to find paint chips that were exact or close matches to the colors on the cards and did some doodling with gel pens. The chunks of solid color stand out amid all the colorful patterns.

asemic writing

This was something I'd never heard of until Karen/MMSA announced the swap. Asemic writing is scribbles that look kinda like they might be words but really aren't. That's my half-assed definition, by the way, not an official one.

I flipped thru my ready to go postcard backgrounds and chose 4, then fiddled around finding images for them, and finally practiced my asemic writing on a piece of scrap paper before doing the actual cards. The people are from old magazines, 1941 Popular Science and 1946 American Home. The bottom one was a Drano ad.

I'm pretty pleased with them and will use this technique further, maybe some postcards that look like postcards that you can't read lol. Anybody wanna swap an asemic postcard? Can be any kind of art, just needs to have some asemic writing on it.

MMSA paperbag book - incoming

Received my paper bag booklet today. Actually, it's prolly been out in the mail box for a few days but only collect the mail a couple times a week, despite the fact that it's about 50 feet from my front door. Just seems like too much trouble at the end of a long day at work. #lazybroad

It's from Laurie Morris and it's great. I love the colors. I'm not sure if Karen knows that or not but she more often than not sends me just what I wanted in the swaps. It's difficult to tell in the photos but the splotches of what looks like brown are actually metallic bronze which contrasts marvelously with the blues and greens. Each page has a flap that's either blank or with a quote on it. And each pocket held several pieces of painted papers to use in my art, last photo. Thanks, Laurie!

 

MMSA paperbag book - outgoing

Another fun swap from Karen. Four lunch bags, decorated however you like, bound into a small book. The one I sent out is up first. I gelli printed both sides of four bags. Takes longer than it sounds cause I did several layers on every side. I made four small collages, one each for the four open ends of the bags that become pockets to tuck things into when you bind the bags together. I also glued on half an envelope and stuck a small booklet into it, made from Pamela's tutorial. It's a cool little booklet. I've since made 8 or 10 of them and had to force myself to stop tearing out likely magazine pages to fold up into covers. Give it a try.

MMSA houses

Got inspired at the 11th hour and made a couple postcards for Karen's house swap. Misc paper backgrounds with gelli print houses, roofs and windows. A bit of text, paint, and some doodling. Pretty simple when you state it like that but they came out cute.

MMSA envelope swap

It wasn't until I was completely finished with these and slipping them into the envelope to send them off to Karen that I realized the swap was for "hand made" envelopes. As in, fold your own. But Karen waived the you-must-fold-the-paper-yourself part of it since mine were every bit as decorated as most of the others will be. A few days ago I posted group shots of all 20 I gellied that day, but then I chose 5 for the swap and did a bunch of pen work on them. Here's three fronts and two backs. The black dots and splats are a bingo marker from the dollar store, either pressed gently or smacked down hard onto the paper. Love the splats!

back of above envie

back of above envie

gelli envelopes!

MMSA recently announced a hand made envelope swap. Last time she had one, I made extras and really enjoyed using them, so this time I made a bunch. Twenty, to be exact. Took about 90 minutes of thrashing with paint and brayers and stencils and envelopes, and it was a blast. Nothing like some time with the gelli plate. (did this after I came home from blueberry pancakes and bacon for breakfast, so I was already in a good mood lol)

The black dots and splats are a black bingo marker from the dollar store.

I couldn't face the thought of scanning both sides of every one, so I took group pics. First pic is fronts, second pic is backs. Colors/patterns used on fronts and backs mostly have no relationship to each other, I just grabbed envelopes at random as I changed colors and stencils.

MMSA the letter S

Postcards needed to portray at least 10 items that started with the letter S. Interesting swap but not one of my favorites because you had so many oddball images that it was tough to make a cohesive, pleasing card with them. All part of the challenge, I suppose.

I paged thru magazines, naming each item on the page by as many names as I could think of trying to find ones that started with S. Rhonda was here and we'd look at a page of a beach scene. I'd say "water" and "ocean". She'd say "sea" and "sand". How differently our minds work.

skull (background), sockets (eye), shutters, sheep, stamp, squares,
shrub, suitcase, statue, silverware, spectacles, scallop border

swatches (background), stars, stripes, swan, statue,
sailboat, sea, skyline, soldier, sisters

MMSA blue & brown

A color combo theme at MMSA this time. My art buddy Rhonda has about a billion postage stamps and she's been sharing the wealth with me lately. When she was down a couple weeks ago, we sorted thru a big box, loosely separating them into a dozen or so categories with the non-starters going back in the box. We sorted blues and browns out while we were at it, knowing this swap was coming up.

I made a loose symmetrical grid on each of my two cards, then filled in the background with gel sticks smeared in with my fingertips. Added a few faux cancellation stamps to the ones already on the postage stamps and called them done. (my spell check doesn't like "faux", wants it to be "fax". seriously, whatever dictionary they loaded didn't include faux??)

MMSA found poetry

I enjoy doing found poetry when I'm in the mood. For this one, you could either cut out words, as I did, or use a page from a book and black out all but the words you want to show as your poetry. I find that pretty difficult, so I did it the easy way and made nonsense haiku.

All the words and phrases are from a large print book I bought solely for the larger type, but then ended up reading and loving, and then reading a few more by the same author. It was Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson, a British writer. She definitely has a unique quirky style and some reviewers didn't care for it at all but I found her delightful. I also read Case Histories and Behind the Scenes At The Museum. Need to find a couple more.

The first one is a paste paper background, the second is watercolor, and the third gelli print. Didn't especially mean to use such varied backgrounds but they're what appealed to me when I flipped thru my pile of ready-to-go-background postcards.

MMSA transparent layers

Two of mine have a gelli print background, the third is a page from an old magazine. Then an overlay of gelli printed deli paper, and a final strip of a packing tape transfer of a phone book page. Added a little bit of doodling.

On the first one, the leaves were the only thing printed on the deli paper, so the turquoise background is showing thru.

On the second one, I cut around the hand before I glued it down, so you're seeing the background as is and also thru the unpainted areas of the hand.

On the third one, the silhouette of the girl was masked off when I gelli printed the page, so you see the old book page thru her.

I was surprised at how difficult the phone book paper was to rub off the tape. I do packing tape transfers a lot and by far the easiest to get really clean are glossy magazine images. They practically slide right off after they've been soaked a few minutes. Even after 10 minutes in water, I had to scrape with my fingernail just to get the phone book paper started, then rub like crazy for several minutes to get it all off. I like the way it looks but it was a pain.