Collage Obsession challenge ATCs

The current Collage Obsession challenge was to use an image of the couple provided.

A few days ago I made up a bunch of ATC blanks with various patterned papers and grabbed a couple that went with the greens and browns in the image. These are what I ended up with.

I deepened the green on the lapel for the first one to better go with the paper and the stamp ink. They sort of look like they're whispering so I paged thru an old book until I found a bit of dialog that fit.

I also can't quite decide if the one on the right is a woman dressed as a man. Maybe it's a costume party?




For the second one, I added a strip of old postcard, a little image of a ship, and a few doo-dads up in the corner to fill in that area.

I love the background paper on this one. It's from a small pack I bought when I first got into collaging and I'll be sorry when it's gone.


I'm happy with both of these, but think I like the bottom one best.

I tinkered with the image in Photoshop and intensified the colors. I may do a couple more in a stronger palette.

Chinese New Year swap

2011 is the year of the rabbit, and a metal year, as well.

Red is the color of celebration in China, which caused some problems when I was working for a Japanese man and his Chinese wife. She would leave the office girls notes written in red in with lots of exclamation points and everyone thought they were really getting yelled at and often wound up in tears. It fell to me as the G.M. to talk to the Chinese woman and explain that it was very upsetting to get these notes from her.

She was amazed and explained that she thought she was leaving happy, exciting notes because they were RED and had lots of happy marks!!!!!!!!  Really makes you see how wars start, doesn't it?

Anyway, I used a fireworks stamp on watercolor paper with RED gouache paint for ink as a background. The rabbit emblem was printed, colored, and cut out. Added some red sequins, stamped 'celebrate 2011' in black and gold, and finished off with some gold trim. Looks pretty festive to me. It'll be fun to see what I get back.

all things French swap

Some ATCs made for a French themed swap.

Matisse, Cannes, and Chanel.



I didn't realize Sarah Bernhardt was French until I started researching all things French while trying to decide what to make.











I bought some ribbon while shopping with Julie during one of her visits and it was just perfect as the accent on this card.

I made an extra of the Chanel card to trade, but I love the Matisse card and am considering keeping it and sending the other Chanel card along instead...

theme thursday - famous faces

There are a lot of art challenge blogs and I keep meaning to play along, but by the time I get something created, I can't find which blog it was, or I missed the deadline and they're on to something else, etc, etc. I took the time yesterday to make an Excel chart of the various blogs who run the types of challenges I like, then filled in the theme for that week, the format (ATC, 4x4, 4x6, etc), and printed it out. At a glance, I can see the theme, what size to make, if there's an image to use, when it's due, whose challenge it is. I looove Excel.

So, this evening, I was able to sit down and crank out a Famous Faces ATC for Theme Thursday.

In going thru my boxes of images, it didn't take me long to decide who to use.

Who's more famous than the Beatles?
Huh?
Nobody, that's who!

So here's Yeah Yeah Yeah, my contribution to Theme Thursday's Famous Faces Challenge. Yay for being organized.

(I used my new Xyron 150 on this. What a cool little gadget. No more getting my gluey fingerprints all over everything.)

Merry Christmas

A Christmas postcard sent to my maternal grandmother in 1909. 

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve

We're off work and home until Tuesday morning. YAY! I love it when Christmas falls on a work day.

 I didn't do a whole lot of decorating, but I did do some. Here's a look around the house. Most of the Santas were made by Moneka and gifted to me over the years. One I earned by stuffing arms and legs during one of her especially busy years.  

The whole time I was a kid, we always had multi-colored lights on our tree and rolled our eyes at the people who had those teeny all-white ones. That's not Christmas-y - Christmas needs colors! But of course somewhere along the way, I discovered the allure of little white lights and that's all I've used for years. 

 




I have a precious box of old ornaments from my mother. Hand blown balls that she made and painted. Fragile glass birds with tails that pull out from their body that clip to the branches of the tree. An old white plastic reindeer that she always hid in the tree for me to find. I didn't unpack them at all this year, just wasn't in the mood.



                                                                       I also didn't unpack the box of handmade but unbreakable ornaments I've acquired over a lifetime of crafting and knowing crafters. Moneka figures heavily into this box with probably half of it coming from her craft room over the years.



This year I did buy a real tree - a 4 foot pine tree from the lot behind the mall that I pass driving home every day. It smells good and all I put on it are little white lights and several strands of silver and pearl garlands. It's very simple and I just love it. I have it on a timer so that it's on when I get home and it's so nice to walk in and see it shining there by the fireplace.




We're far from family and friends, so we're staying home tomorrow with lots of good food, our books, and our computers, and enjoying a quiet day to ourselves. I hope you're all doing whatever it is that makes it a good day for you. Merry Christmas!

Tacky Jackie ATCs

There's a swap going on the artisttradingcards Yahoo group called Totally Tacky. I read the rules and thought about it for a few days. Pink flamingos? Bad 60s hair? Hippie tie dye stuff? Garden gnomes?

I wasn't real inspired until an idea came to me - take a really classy person and tacky them up. So I signed up for the swap and went off to google images to search for a suitably high class person to desecrate.

And so today I present to you <drum roll> Tacky Jackie!!!

The black shape inside the star is actually a shiny purple sequin.

I used the least favorite of my fancy papers for the backgrounds. It reminds me of the kitchen in my first apartment. I like rusts and browns but plain old orange just doesn't do it for me.

Got out my Dymo label maker machine for the words.

Coloring her dress three different ways really taxed my meager art skills but they came out ok. I've never owned anything leopard-printed in my life, but we watched a show on leopards the other night, so that's where that thought came from.

Madonna's breast cone things came to mind as I was mulling over really tacky stuff, so I did a set of those. (I've never owned those either!)

No idea where the third dress came from. Maybe I owned something like it in Jr High...


Sequins, turquoise eye shadow, butterfly hair ornaments, talking birds, metallic markers, smiley faces - nothing was off limits as I worked away on poor Jackie.

Hopefully the people who receive her in the swap won't be outraged by my treatment of an American icon.

But even putting her in breast cones is kinder treatment than the tabloids were, I suppose.