Monochromatic postcards and a giveaway.

Yesterday I had the enormous pleasure of going to Corrine's studio for some play time with other artists.  It was my second time playing with Corrine and Mandy, and my first time meeting Judy, Barbara and Urvashi.

We had so much fun.

Corrine's invitation suggested we make "winter white" mail art.  Apparently this color-loving group balked, and so she suggested "vintage color" instead.  As it turns out, none of us could resist the lure of Corrine's vibrant paint collection, but I did manage to make a few "vintagey" collages before breaking out the aqua and orange.

I was way too busy making, talking, playing, laughing, eating, and laughing some more to remember to take pictures of this group of wonderful women and the art we all created
(Corrine has a few here)
After I got home I cut my collages into postcards.

Here are a few:

As Hurricane Sandy breathes down our neck, I'm posting fast and furiously over at Mail Me Some Art.  How many videos can I post before the power goes out?

You should pop over there and see the amazing duct tape journals that have been made.

Ridiculously inspiring.

and oh yeah- I'm hosting a giveaway over there too.

Want to win this set of wonderful books?

All you have to do is be part of a 2012 MMSA swap (past, present or future) and leave a comment on the giveaway post.  There are still three more open swaps this year so if you haven't joined a swap yet, it's not too late.  Click this link to read more abut the giveaway and help spread the word.

a few things

I'm getting tired of seeing that collage-tramp from my last post.

So here are a few other things.

A postcard for a swap-bot group.

Theme - ephemera collage.

I went with vintage paper only and glued it to the cover of an old reader's digest condensed book and mailed it naked.

 This next one was supposed to be for a "scary" postcard swap.

After I finished it I realized it was hosted by the "Cut and Paste" group and was supposed to be largely collage, rather than largely painted.

So this will go to someone else.

This is the creepy collaged version I ended up mailing.

An incredible amount of beautiful stuff has been arriving as part of the "Mail Me Some Art" swaps.  I'm posting daily.  Go check it out.

When collage goes bad

 No, no, no....

not that kind of bad.

Just the ugly kind of bad.

The way-too-much-going-on-here-maybe-I-shouldn't-have-added-that-orange-paint kind of bad.

Just before I was about to throw a few bad collages in the trash, I realized I shouldn't waste a perfectly good substrate (a.k.a recycled cereal box).

Out came the gesso.

And lots of layers of paint.

Ugly collage #1 became this:

 

I rather like it now.

Ugly collage #2 became this:

(I will probably add a little something to it later. or maybe not.)

And now for some weekend collages that didn't end up covered in gesso:

(this was one of my gelatin prints, made on a dictionary page.  glued down a little found poetry.)

Weekend advice:

Avoid the cigarettes, but keep the gesso handy.

Puddentain

Did anyone else grow up saying this?

What's your name?

Puddentain

Where do you live?

Down the drain.

and finally:

Even though I'm almost 45 years old, if you ask me a question about a number I will always answer "cucumber".  Some habits are hard to break.

These are pages from a round robin journal - the theme (as you might have guessed) was numbers.

New swaps at Mail Me Some Art

Here is the list of swaps that I'm currently hosting on my other blog,

Mail Me Some Art

Join one, join them all!

Click on each link for more details.

Painted Paper Swap - postmark by October 13th

"Things that go bump in the night" ATC swap - postmark by October 20th

Duct tape journal swap - postmark by October 27th

Bookmark swap - postmark by November 3rd

"Thankful" postcard swap - postmark by November 10th

Gift tag swap - postmark by November 17th

If you've never participated in a MMSA swap before, here's how they work:

You make something beautiful.  You send it to me.  I post pictures of it on the MMSA blog (with a link back to you).  I mail you something beautiful that someone else made in return.

By mailing everything to me, you are guaranteed to receive something.

(I've been in swaps where I get my partner's address via email.  I send off my lovingly created work of art and never get anything back.  bummer!  This never happens with MMSA.  If you mail something, you get something.)

I will most likely take a swap hiatus after these are finished and resume in January 2013.

because of "The Holidays" and all, dontcha know.

Hope to see you in the mail!

No place to sit

I'm gelatin printing tonight.

It's not always the one you think it's going to be

Yesterday I asked you which of the weekend collages was your favorite.

So many of you commented that you liked this one best:

It's one of my favorites, too, but it didn't start out that way.

This is a lesson in not giving up on things you think are ugly.

I started the postcard series with four larger collages and the plan to cut them up:

Of the four, the orange was my least favorite.

I thought I was going to love the lower left after I cut it because it has those awesome colored circles and a really cool bit of textured silvery paper.

But it just wasn't working.

I slapped down an image from an old book to act as a better focal point, and then hated it so much I tried to peel it off.  It left a whole lot of papery residue behind and the card was even worse.  I cut the tulip image out of a napkin, to be the replacement focal point but it was weird and didn't feel integrated.  I smudged the edges of the card with a dark brown ink pad to give it a border, and I kind of liked the way the dark color highlighted some of the texture, but the overall look of the whole card was still odd.

Grasping at straws, I took my favorite circle stencil and blotted on some gesso.  I had intended to add some kind of color on top of the gesso, but once it dried, I ended up liking it just the way it was.  All it needed was a touch-up of the brown ink around the edges and suddenly this card that almost ended up in the trash became a favorite.

Moral?

Gesso can fix anything.

Weekend collage

Working monochromatically on more "4-from-1" postcards

brown 1

brown 2

b&w 1

b&w 2

b&w 3

green 1 

green 2

green 3

green 4

orange 1

orange 2

orange 3

 Which one's your favorite?