Bird postcards

Finally got a bit inspired by a swap on Mail Me Some Art - bird postcards. Had some unattractive gelli printed cards so drew birds on them and colored with oil pastels. Much better. I like the way the paint specs from my filthy gelli plate show thru.

back yard tour

Our back yard has a large raised bed around one side and halfway across the back. It was full of weeds and weird bushes when we moved in so we gutted it, put in some fruit trees and planted various veggies and herbs. This is our 3rd summer here and the bed has changed  each year. There's another whole half of the yard to the right of all these pics. I'll cover it another day.

This was January 2013. See the Christmas tree laying back there in the center? Also a lot of herbs on the right and a tomato or pepper or something on the left. The fruit trees are dormant, it's raining. Typical January.

This was this morning on our little peach tree that hasn't been in the ground a year yet. It had 5 peaches this year and each of them was huge, gorgeous and delicious. This one is the size of my fist and just beautiful. We'll be eating it on our cereal tomorrow morning.

This was an abortive attempt to photograph the peach but I like the shadows.

A shot of the corner this morning. We planted late so everything is still small altho there are peppers and tomatoes here and there. That's a Meyer lemon in a pot at right, with various potted flowers on stands around it, a little island in all that concrete.

A more straight on view. Peach tree at back left, apricot tree at back right. A better view of the lemon tree island.

And a long shot from the end, standing out in the lawn. Bough the cart for $3 at a yard sale last summer. Got the tubs for free from a trash pile. To the left of this area is a step down, then a covered patio that's just outside our kitchen and family room, so we get a nice view of the yard and garden from the two rooms we use the most. I sprinkle birdseed out here twice a day and really enjoy watching the doves, sparrows, finches and jays who come and peck around.

incoming ATCs

 Stamp heads have taken over! Postcards, ATCs, journal pages - they're everywhere!! Including here, where I received one from Connie and two from an MMSA swap.

Also received a lovely bird themed ATC in a trade with Carolyn (IG name @cfalbro). She does a lot of swaps on Instagram, a thing I had not thought of until I ran across her.

This one is Connie's. She posted a bunch of ATCs on her blog
and the Sun-Maid guy just grabbed me.
I commented how cool I thought he was
and he showed up in the mail a few days later.
Thanks, Connie!

These two are from the MMSA swap - Michele in VA's on top,
Pamela's on the bottom, along with the cute little envelope it came in.
Both of them are great examples of the genre.

A serene bird ATC from Carolyn.
Love the frayed cheesecloth. 

MMSA bird postcards

I was happy to see Karen announce a bird postcard swap back in November, I think it was, since I like birds. I posted my outgoing cards and now here are the ones I got back. All good ones, in keeping with most of the work done in the MMSA swaps. 

Made by Nydia, this card features here hand drawn and colored bird,
some washi tape and doodling on a painted background.
I love the little bluebird.

Made by Valerie, this card is bird images from magazines and
postage stamps on doodled card stock.
The bird with the crossed beak is interesting,
as that actually happens in nature. I like the balance that this card has.

Made by Trula, this card is collaged, colored,
then sanded or scraped to give it a worn look that I quite like.
I also like the oddball selection of images that
have nothing in common but make a cool collage. 

bird postcards!

I like birds. I like tame ones (I own a parrot) and wild ones (my entire back patio is a bird feeder), birds in books and on mugs, and I especially like them in art. When Karen at MMSA announced a bird theme postcard swap, I stood up and cheered.

Our store is closed Sunday and Monday so those are usually my days off but today I went in at 7am so the sprinkler repair guy could do his thing without people in the way. I took a bunch of supplies and made bird postcards while I was there. Best day at work I've ever had!

The first two have vintage paper backgrounds with graphics from some collage sheets by Tangie Baxter. I didn't buy the pack shown at the link but picked up some when I was in AZ a couple weeks ago. Added some appropriate book text, a little shadowing, and was done.

The third is a gelli print back ground on which I drew one of my world famous birds (the *only* thing I can draw), some washi tape, a strip of text from a magazine, and some edge shading with gel sticks which isn't showing up in this scan at all. The coloring on the bird was done with Copic markers.

Hope I get some good ones back!

ornament swap

My mail art buds - Jewels and Beth - and I swapped Christmas ornaments. Here are the ones I sent out. After I get both of theirs, I'll post them.

Little birds made from Starbucks cup sleeves. I try to cut out the wings
so that I get a picture or a word or two. Rub some glue on the edges.
dab in glitter, and wa-la - birdie ornaments.

Some folks don't like glitter, and I'll admit it gets all over the place,
but I think these little guys are really cute.

I glittered them in non-Christmas colors so that they can stay out all year.

Layered, stitched circles. Saw these online or in a magazine last year
and really liked them. I've made a few different batches
and used different materials each time.
This time I stuck a few stamens between the layers for something
different.

From the back: upholstery fabric, lace from an ancient shawl, satin from
a very old thifted slip, crinkled pattern paper, old book text,
messy black stitching.

Handmade card too! I went all out. The image is from a postcard
sent to my maternal grandmother in 1909. It's layered onto old
ledger paper, then glued to a piece of folded kraft card stock.

Winnie kills a lemon

Winston is a red bellied African parrot. We've had him for about 15 years, since he was 3 months old. He's about 5 inches tall and got the personality of a great white on steroids. Danger, danger, danger. But he plays a lot, so he's fun to watch, and he talks. He says "good boy" and "gimme kiss" in a deep, guttural voice like a hit man whose unfortunate karma brought him back as a nasty little parrot. He also mutters the dog's name whenever she barks or dashes thru the house.   "Maggie... Maggie." 

Here he is in all his red-eyed glory making mincemeat of a lemon on the kitchen table yesterday. The pictures where his head is blurry is cause he's shaking it so fast the camera can't stop the motion.

paper cranes

I've always admired those folded paper cranes but never had the patience for origami. I get to about step 5 and by then my paper has so damn many folds in it that I can't tell what the hell I'm supposed to do next, so I wad it up and try again. By the third one, I'm done. Got better things to do with my time, thank you very much whoever thought up this maddening pastime.

But my friend Julie has a string of 100 of these, made for her by a friend when she was ill. I keep seeing it in pictures that I took of her house while I was visiting last January. I'd really like to make one of those, I thought.

One crane, I mean - not one string of 100 cranes. I'm not that nuts.

Then the other day in the mail, I get an envelope addressed to me in my own writing. Huh? When I opened it, there was a paper crane, quickly made from an old square of notebook paper. His edges weren't real crisp and he listed to one side, but he was very cool, mostly because of those things, and that renewed my desire to make a paper crane myself.

So I googled 'origami crane,' printed out the first set of instructions I came to and sat down on the couch with a package of wrapping paper in various quilt patterns. Back when I bought it, I could hardly stand to wrap packages in it cause I didn't want to use it up (I'm so over that now), and here I was about to probably wad several sheets of it into trash can filler while trying to make a crane.

However, things went swimmingly well and I had a crane in under 5 minutes. Yay! Then I made another just in case the first one was a fluke, and it came out fine. Tonite when I came home from work, I was paging thru a magazine and a couple pages caught my eye, so I whacked out 6 inch squares and made two more cranes from memory. I now have a flock seige of cranes on my kitchen counter. I may get to a hundred yet. (the 5th one was bright yellow, don't know why I didn't take its picture except in the line-up photo)

The background in the individual shots is two painted canvasses I did a few weeks ago. I plan to collage on them eventually, but was hot to make layers one day and they were the result. Beth in my mail art group does great collages on canvas backgrounds and seeing her work gave me the itch to try it. I'm pleased with them, so thanks, Beth! The smaller one had a print of a red coffee mug on it and was in the Michaels closeout bin for quarter. I just painted over it.

this is the one that came in the mail... rustic and charming

The envelope that came in the mail was one I'd sent off to a woman who had a note on her blog. Something like 'send me a SASE and I'll send you some cool stuff from my studio. no telling what it might be and it may take a while.'

Well, that sounded like fun and I'd only be out $0.44 if I never got anything back. It took a few months, so it was a fun surprise to open the envelope and find the little crane, a glassine envelope with 22 old foreign postage stamps in it, and a little print of a kid flying a kite. Just random stuff that totally made me smile. I explained it to my husband and he just shook his head in wonder at the (odd) things I find to do.

I just love the internets!

hand drawn

Brace yourselves - I'm blogging some ATCs that I drew by hand. Maybe sit down till it's over.

So, I really wish I could draw. My mother was a very good artist, as I've mentioned before, and it bugs the hell out of me that I can't pick up a pencil and render a recognizable drawing of whatever. I was cruising thru the ATCs made for a hand drawn bird themed swap and saw some whimsical fantasy birds that cracked me up. I studied them for a bit, then got out the black marker and gave it a shot.

The results are... not too bad. By the third one, I was starting to feel like maybe my problem had been trying to draw something realistic and that maybe I actually have the heart of an impressionist. <I can hear you snickering...>

Anyway, I'm pleased with these, prolly more than I should be, given that most 6th graders could crank out something similar, but for me, it's a definite start.

a couple ATCs

This is really a great little art form. Just as I loved miniature quilts and small crazy quilt projects like needlebooks,  I love the size of an ATC. 2.5" x 3.5". Enough room for an image or two, some writing, a doo-dad, a button, some lace.

The other day I cut up a bunch of cardboard into ATC size and tucked them into a spot up by the mugs that hold my pencils and markers. When I get the urge, I grab one and go. I'm so anal about planning things out that I'm really working on just going with the process, letting a picture set the tone, or a line of a poem.

A STIFF DRINK

The first one started with a floor plan of the Louvre. I love museums, but after a while I get tired of all that walking around. While looking for something else, I came across the image of the woman who looked like she needed to sit down. Or maybe something a bit more bracing, like a drink.

The real challenge was finding all the words. I ended up paging thru 3 different books cause I wanted a mismatched look. The tan paper under the woman is yet more of that Starbucks scone bag...

SWIFT WINGS

This one started with the image of the red-winged blackbird that I tore out of the Sunday paper. At the time, I had no idea what I'd do with it but I liked it enough to save. Today, after cranking out 4 more tags for the Christmas tag swap, I was tidying up and saw the bird. 

I grabbed a blank ATC and glued some torn paper to it. Then I got out my new Distress Ink pad and dabbed here and there. One of my weak areas is creating interesting backgrounds. I tend to like the 'old paper with brown edges' look, so I'm trying to branch out a bit. I liked the result. 

The bird was holding a ticket, so I cut around his head to get rid of that, then darkened his edges and glued him down. I'd been lusting after the postmark stamps and finally got them the other day at half price with a coupon from Michaels. I put a couple faint Paris postmarks on, then started thinking about words. I have a whole drawer of pages torn from various books, so I dug around and found this line from a poem. Perfect. 

I'm very happy with this one. The whole thing went together in about 20 minutes and it's the first one I've done that looks more 'artsy' to me than my usual stuff.

(Don't know what the hell's the matter with getting the text to fit around the second image... worked fine on the first one. <scratches head in confusion>)