flowers in the house

Pretty much the only time I manage to think of bringing flowers inside is when SmallButCharming does her occasional Monday call for flowers in the house. I don't have a lot of cutting flowers but did manage to come up with some lavender, a few springs of tea tree, and a couple salvia stems. Very pretty on the mantle. No idea who the wedding couple it. It's just a vintage photo from an antique shop. I have about a hundred of them and change them out now and then.

icad 9 thru 14

All collage, all the time with this week's cards. Sad to say, I made 4 of the 6 yesterday. So much for art every day. Sometimes I'm just too whipped by the end of a 9.5 hr day and I just crash on the couch with a book. Then days like yesterday come along, where I spent at least 7 hours making art at the kitchen table, so I guess I don't really need icad to get me to art regularly - I've been in the habit for years now. Still, I'm enjoying using these cards, making these small scenes and finding silly text for them.

June 9 is dress pattern tissue, part of a playing card that already had a hole torn in it for some reason I don't remember, pic of a nerdy guy from an old ad showing thru, test stamps for an arrow stamp I carved a while back, and some book text.
June 10 is all bits pulled from my box of stuff I cut out in the evening in front of the tv.

June 11 is more misc parts pulled together (sort of lol) to make a whole. I'd cut the girl's eye out previously for something else and the cat just seemed to fit there. This is a really odd bunch of stuff and I'm glad to see my mind can do this type of thing. I used to be way too tightly wrapped to make weird collages but I'm getting better at it.
June 12 another oddball. Fish tail left over from postcard for friend, turtles also ended up unused on postcard so ended up here. Vase and sign from cut out box. No rhyme or reason to this one either. #strangeday #minimalist

June 13 didn't intend to make 13 of something for the 13th, but saw circles in my cut outs box and decided to do all circles. Counted them after and had 13. Huh. Couldn't find a big 3 in magazine so cut off one side of a B.
June 14 Lady from 1946 American Home mag, other stuff from who knows where. I kept coming across the "book-of" and "the month" as I was poking thru text box and it looks like she's holding a prototype of an iPad so the text fit.

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

icad 1 thru 8

Yes, I climbed onto the icad train this year. I've started it before but never made it to the end. I'm just not good at things you gotta do every day. Well, I mean, I brush my teeth and change my undies, but with non-essential do-it-if-you-wanna-the-world-won't-quit-spinning-if-you-don't type stuff I pretty much always fall asleep somewhere along the way.

Also I just don't like doing art on index cards. They don't hold up well to wet work, they aren't large or sturdy enough to send as postcards, the lines bug me, etc, etc. While digging thru my drawers of stuff I don't use much, I found a box of tabbed manila cards, 4" x 6", nice and heavy, perfect for daily art. So I began, and made it thru day 3 before completely forgetting about it in the crush of working 45-50 hours a week and trying to keep the house somewhat under control, food on the table, the garden watered, the dog walked - all the things you gotta do as a semi-responsible tax paying adult.

So I caught up yesterday and here they are. I did the first one to the foreign language prompt cause it was fun to pretend I knew Italian, but the rest are all mostly collage cause that's what I enjoy doing. These will be going out as postcards as I feel the urge, long before icad ends.

friends & faux

I drew an artiststamp for one of friends&faux's traveling postcards. See it here. Mine is the bottom right stamp - the bird's head.

I was unaware of this project until one of my swap buddies Peggy asked me if I'd like to do the last spot on the card. I'd never made an artiststamp before but figured it out easily enough. The cards start off from the friends&faux person and then go from artist to artist until they're full and the last person sends them back home. Lots of 6 degrees of separation stuff going on here. I don't know the person Peggy got it from, and she prolly didn't know the person that the person who sent it to her got it from.

The site is full of returned cards. Kinda fun to scroll thru and see all the various ways people made stamps for them.

video of envelopes!

I made a video, a flip-thru of the envelopes in the previous post. Stood the camera up on the table, leaning against the salt shaker, and held the postcards down in front of it and pushed the button. Worked pretty good!  In the background you can hear the golf tournament on the TV and my parrot Winston squawking. Almost like being here!

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.