SOS144: use your oldest tree stamp

for this week's challenge at shopping our stash, the direction couldn't be more simple, could it? use your oldest tree stamp. easy peasy! in cases like this, i'm always embarrassed to admit to being stumped, but i was. partially because my oldest tree stamp is a 2.25 x 1.25" row of palm trees that my friend barb found in hawaii, years and years ago. which i totally *LOVE* but somehow i just couldn't think what sort of card i could build around such a small image. then suddenly, i had a really WEIRD idea! want to see?

(palm tree silhouette stamp: from the long's drug in the ala moana center, c.1996, stamped with stewart superior permanent india ink on top of a pink orchid photo printed on kodak premium glossy paper; basic grey oversized chipboard letters used as a template; palm tree clear-background stickers: creative imaginations; dimensional hibiscus sticker: sandylion; cloud patterned vellum: maggie holmes/crate paper; adhesives: 3m foam tape, xyron machine)

yeah. told you, it's a little odd. the stamp actually isn't the focal point, but i still think it makes the card! the pink letters are built on top of an enlarged (and extensively photoshopped) picture of orchids i took in hawaii. i printed it on a full page of glossy paper, stamped the palm silhouettes, then traced some oversized chipboard letters over top. that process looked a little bit like this:

the whole idea is inspired by something even weirder, that i made last summer:

it's an index card from the ICAD project i participated in, via the daisy yellow art blog, and i think it's a pretty good illustration of why i love doing "pointless" art journally type things. well, the main reason is, they're FUN and i enjoy them ;but sometimes they can also turn out to be a tiny bit practical, in ways you would not have seen coming!

and now i urge you to visit SOS and see the beautiful work of my teammates, who have definitely put the TREE in "treat" for you this week!!! :)

...and DPP begins!

that is the daily paper prompt, as devised and hosted by miss tammy at the daisy yellow art blog. this is a fitting and equally inspirational follow-up to the awesomely addictive index card a day project, and a great time to jump into... or back into... art journaling!

001: goodness

what can i say? i like to start any new creative enterprise with a collage. although i want DPP, like ICAD, to be much more about process than outcome, there's something to be said about swinging for the fence on your first time at bat. (sorry about the sports metaphor, i'm not sure where that came from, and it won't be repeated any time soon!!!) translation: if you ♥LOVE♥ first page, it just totally fires you up to keep going!

when last we spoke, i was debating between sticking with the 3x5" index card format, or moving into a traditional (larger!) art journal. in the end i split the difference. having rediscovered this (paritally used) garage-sale-derived accounting ledger, i realized it was perfect for me! because i love the look of a bound book, but prefer working on and photographing loose pages. the cover of this pops off and on easily for maximum access, which is ideal. on the other hand, it's *BIG*... but there's nothing to say one has to fill every page!

002: rainbow

again i am loving the fact that tammy is posting a prompt every day for our inspiration! some days i go off in my own direction, but often i find myself thinking about a previous entry and wondering how i would interpret it. so i do it then. technically this day was "paint a rainbow" but i was in a washi tape sort of mood! :)

if you are in the mood for total ♥EYE CANDY♥ and massive inspiration, check out the daisy yellow blog and/or the flickr group!

the end of ICAD

have to tell you that i'm about bursting with pride at having finished all 61 days of the index card a day project... and finished ON TIME, at that! go, me! here are my last four cards:

058: elephant

the topic came from the week nine prompt list, and elephants say "india" to me, so it wasn't hard to bring in a little of everything i love, including hindi newspaper for the paper-pieced elephant.

059: label

another idea from the same list, which i actually read on the day i opened an uber-fancy bar of soap as part of a birthday package from my friend lelia; the wrapper is made of sturdy glossy cardstock and has pretty illustrations inside too, so i made it into a little journaling card.

060: oodles of (flower!) doodles

twin inspiration based on the prompt list AND the many cool doodled flowers tammy has shown us in the last two months; mine got a bit fancified as an excuse to break out the water soluble crayons and practice shading a little bit.

061: thank you!!!

it only seems right to address the last card in the series to tammy, our hostess, and to all of the other participants whose work and comments are so inspiring! 

thank you for a wonderful 61 days!

♥♥♥

i have to admit that i've been wondering and secretly hoping that the daily paper prompts would follow ICAD in the same way they did last year... and in this post tammy announced that they would! (HOORAY!) so if you've been wondering if you'd enjoy making a little something just for yourself each day (or every other day, or even once a week!) this would be a fantastic time to jump in and try it out, dontcha think?! i'm still debating whether to keep the index card format (plenty of room left on the big honkin' ring!) or move into a regular art journal, or maybe split the difference and do postcard sized or a playing card album or... well, i did *say* i'm still debating! we'll see what happens when i sit down tonight! until then, ciao, darlings! ♥

guess what i made over the weekend?

just one of my all-time favorite minibooks, that's all! and i'm glad it came out so well because it's the covers for my ICAD index cards... a project which wraps up today, and with which i have been (as you know!) in love all summer long. so i wanted my cards to have a really special home and now they do. yay! ♥

(book boards built from several layers of cereal box xyroned together and then covered in a printed book page; collages made of various vintage papers, a bit of sewing pattern, some doilies, etc; pink ghost letters: heidi swapp for advantus, bordeaux font; flourish: recollections; flower: prima; brad: crate paper; teeny tiny alpha stickers: kaiser; washi tape: october afternoon; xl book ring from staples; adhesives: staples brand gluetape runner, sewing machine)

i suspect even heidi swapp herself was not as excited as i was to hear recently that she was making a new version of her utterly divine, colorful-but-see-through acrylic letters. these are not those, however... these are the original ones!!! yes, i still have some. i still have a few different ones, as a matter of fact; i ♥LOVED♥ them in the olden days and i still love them now! these larger ones, especially, are perfect when you'd like a fairly prominent title without covering up too much background. because i'm really happy with my uber-layered background, too, actually. so much so, i made another for the back of the book:

yep, the front and back covers are kissin' cousins. i used bits of several different book papers, a few older illustrations, part of an income tax form, some doilies... if it was cream or white or soft grey and made of paper, i probably ripped a little bit of it off and glued it onto one of my 4x6 covers!

and yes, of course, i'm including a gratuitous sprawly picture of the (almost) completed book:

i mean, really, it wouldn't be an official minibook-braggin' post if it didn't include one of those, now would it?! :) that's fifty eight days of ICAD goodness you see right here... tune in tomorrow for days 59-61, darlings! ♥

the ICAD-ing continues

and if you think my title is awkward, you should know that i considered and rejected "ICAD-ery" and yes, even "ICAD-ification"; so there! ICAD-ing it is!!! :) despite the fact that i'm already scraping the bottom of the cool title barrel with half a week left to go on the index card a day project, my joy in creating and sharing these little random pieces of art remains undiminished. ♥

053: indian elements

i never get tired of india. i like indian food, i like bollywood movies, i like bhangra, i like mehndi. and i really, realllllllly like little bits of indian-inspired art. with bling on them!!! :) 

054: clouds

cloud punch + vintage italian book page + ship illustration + sewing machine = ♥

055: doodles and tapes

this was inspired by the many gorgeous zentangle and doodle-filled ICADs my fellow participants have been uploading to the flickr group, and not something i invented on the spot to immediately use/justify the awesome roll of bicycle-printed tape i impulse-bought at staples that day. so i don't know *where* you even got that idea. ;)

056: concentric circles

inspired by the week nine prompt list. hand-cut shapes and wonky stitching... a lauren speciality!

057: ogee pattern

another one from the prompt list. i'm starting to feel like i'm getting the hang of water-soluble wax crayons a tiny bit. yay!

next on my agenda is making and decorating a pair of cardboard covers so the collection of cards currently hanging on an extra large ring will start to actually look like a book!

and with those two words *EVERYTHING* changed!

the two words being "stapled collage" which i read on the week eight prompt list for the ICAD project. of course to say that everything changed is a massive exaggeration, but it makes for an excellent title, dontcha think? and truly, it did feel like a firecracker of inspiration going off inside my head! thus i'm showing these out of order, so i can make my favorite be on top:

048: stapled collage

it's got about 12 layers, mostly vintage, and yes, they are all attached with that one staple! this took an embarrassingly long time to make, most of which was spent figuring out how to position everything so it was spread out enough to be seen, but compact enough to stay on there. 

047: aloha, hibiscus

yes, it's yet another hawaii collage, this one inspired by the gorgeous hibiscus stamp that gina carved for me, which i ♥LOVE♥! she carved the smaller flower, too, and the base is a photo i took on waikiki beach. 

049: namaste collage

aesthetically, this might be my least favorite ICAD of the year, a fact of which i am actually rather proud! see, there was a point at which this looked really beautiful, but it was totally safe and a little dull; so i made myself keep going and "wreck" it. because the most important part of art journaling (for me!) is to emphatically place more emphasis on PROCESS than OUTCOME.

050: disco

surprise! it's another stapled collage! i should probably apologize in advance because i am pretty sure i'll be making waaaay too many of these over the next few weeks.

051: sewn stack of layers

NOT another stacked and stapled collage. no siree bob. this one is SEWN. totally different. totally. :)

more, more, more!

ICADs, that is. some (but not all) utilize the week seven prompt list miss tammy generously provided on the daisy yellow art blog. i've been winging it a lot more this year, though. i find that i have quite a backlog of my own ideas i want to try out; i suspect mostly because during the whole home-buying and moving process i was really only making stuff for specific deadlines and challenges. which is great, but does not (for me) generate playfulness and experimentation in the same way that working in an art journal does. specifically, i am hooked on layered backgrounds made of many different scraps of paper. as addictions go, this one seems pretty innocuous, and i'm making quite a few things i like, so i'm goin' with it! :)

043: ocean

layers of vintage paper (told ya!), a blue spattery trasparency, machine stitching, layers of rub-ons... i like this one even better IRL

044: washi plaid

i accidentally (!) bought a set of 1/8" wide washi tape at michaels last weekend. so i had to try them out. obviously.

045: raindrops

(more!) layers of vintage paper, with a julie balzer stencil on top and an umbrella from the "already cut out" file. niiiiice.

046: geisha collage

geisha transparency (printed a while ago from an older digital kit i cannot find the name of, sorry!) plus lots and lots and lots of rub-ons, on top of... wait for itttttttttttt... layers of vintage paper!

047: bicycle

i cut out these guys before bed one night... the next day, seemingly on their own... they evolved into this completely unplanned collage that totally makes me laugh. i ♥LOVE IT♥ when that happens!!! 

(and right there is what i love most about the ICAD experience!!!!)

it's not even a week!

since i posted the last batch of index card a day goodness... go, me!

039: aloha

it's been 18 months since we went to hawaii, but we still talk about it all the time, and some of us (ok, mostly ME, lol) make little random bits of art. the palm tree stamp is hawaiian, given to me by my friend barb, years ago. the base of the card was this mega-photoshopped pic i took of orchids at the foster botanical garden in honolulu. i thought it looked kind of sunset-y!

since it was pretty large (printed for something else, then not used) i had a leftover chunk of photo, which i used as base for the next card, the following night. but i wound up with so many layers on that one, you really don't see what it is. which is ok.

040: bhangra babe

again the combination of postage and rubber stamps, which for some reason i really like right now. the bird is from a digital kit, which i had also printed out ages ago, and i'd even fussy cut it, too.

which brings me to a question: am i the only one who has MASSES of leftover bits and pieces?! i mean, specifically... patterned paper scraps, off-cuts of vintage book pages, digi-files printed (on photo paper or sticker paper or a transparency) but not used, illustrations or stamped images i've cut out but abandoned, etc etc. i'm not complaining, mind you; i consider all the "extra" stuff a head start for the next project, and i just file them away, like with like. in fact, said files were the first thing i grabbed when i knew i was going to be locked out of my art lair during the great floor-refinishing caper. i limited myself to ONE packing box of paper, and this is it:

at the front are patterned paper scraps, sorted by color. further back is "the good stuff"; ok, heck, it's ALL good stuff, actually, i never met a piece of paper i didn't love, and that's the truth! :) but at the back of this box are more obscure things, like vintage paper and tags and magazine pages and... well EVERYTHING! these i group thematically, so that if i want some foreign text, or a bit of map, they're all together and i can just flip through them:

i also have a big file of "ready to use" stuff; mostly things that have been fussy-cut in advance. sometimes because i thought they might be right for a project, but then changed my mind... (i do A LOT of experimentation in the "lay out phase"; i dry fit everything and move it around for ages until something starts to gel) ...or sometimes, at the end of the night, when i'm too tired to be creative, but not tired enough to go to sleep, i'll just pick an image or two and trim them. they used to be in files, as well, but the tiny bits would fall out or tear, so now they're in envelopes:

back to ICAD, but this next card does illustrate how my storage method works for me. i wanted to make an all-pink collage, so i grabbed the pink scraps folder and rummaged a bit:

041: magenta

being spoilt for choice in terms of pink scraps, i narrowed down to ones that were inky essperiments, or offcuts. then i played with them a bit, but part of the ICAD exercise for me is not-- as is my usual tendency-- to over, over, OVER-think everything. so i tend to glue a lot faster, and dry-fit less. which i did. and yeah, the diecut heart was just there in the folder, too. no idea why, but i used it.

042: washi rainbow

one of the suggested ICAD weekly themes (in the first week i think?) was rainbows. i haven't been following the themes very vigorously this year, but that one stuck in my head and i keep coming back to it. when i was thinking about something new and fun i could do with my somewhat (AHEM) "plentiful" collection of tape, it came back yet again. i would not rule out seeing another version of this, for that matter.

wow, for a post with only four index cards in it, this thing is LONG! sorry about that, i guess the extra time being locked in the guestroom is sort of a mixed blessing, eh? not to worry, the floors will be finished eventually and i'll be back to neglecting you again soon, darlings! :) :) :)

it happened during "floor-pocalypse"!

the good news: we're having the (vintage, hardwood) floors in three rooms downstairs sanded and re-stained, and i think they are going to look AMAZING when they are done!

the bad news: i have to be home all week, but cannot get into my office/art lair because they are plastic-ed off and it would require going through the workspace and breaking the awesome floor guys' meticulous dust-minimizing seal; also the a/c cannot be on downstairs and it's hot! so i'm basically camping out upstairs with my computer.

the other good news: i finally got caught up on photographing and posting my ICAD cards, amid more noise, but (thankfully!) less dust than i expected. woohoo! i'm calling this a win!!! ♥

 032: stamps and stamps

vintage postage stamps glued randomly to a card, then stamped on with a BUNCH of different swirly stamps, then sewn swirls on top. and a butterfly! it got a bit "muddy" at the end, but i still kinda like it.

033: definition/monochrome

two ideas, all smooshed together, in collage form. plus... cookies!!! :)

034: fourth of july

when we were buying our house, the owners mentioned that the local country club puts on a great fireworks display, and that our deck has pretty much the best view of it you can get from anywhere. they were sooooooooooooo right!!! ♥

035: transparent layers

this card is entirely flat, but has LOADS of layers, thanks to the wonderful collage tool known as the inkjet transparency. i use them mostly for cardmaking and travel books, but since they are on the pricey side, i always fill in every single bit of space on an 8.5x11" sheet, even if that means printing random digital files. then i put the "extra bits" in my collage file to use later. the buddha and 

lotus are both (heavily photoshopped) photos of mine; the chinese text is an anna aspnes brush, i think.

 036: stream of consciousness

ok, i honestly planned to do traditional (written!) journaling on this one, after i laid down a background of collagey bits. and then somehow the collage bits BECAME the "stream of consciousness". so i just went with it.

037: best friends

ok yeah, i'm definitely in a hardcore collage phase. part of me thinks i should be pushing myself to use other media and shake things up a lot more. the other part is having soooooo much fun gluing and layering that it's just NOT LISTENING. guess which is winning??! :) :) :) 

038: another rainbow

wouldja believe that the yellow part of this collage is the leftover "frame" bit of a sheet of small 3/8" round label stickers? and if you do believe that, can anybody tell me *WHY* i would've saved such a thing??! ok, well, to do this. obviously.

have you checked out the ICAD page at daisy yellow? howsabout the flickr group? both are awesome, i do assure you, darlings! ♥

even MORE icads...

...including my favorite one of the year so far, can you guess which of these it is??

026: asian collage

possibly the most random collage i've ever made... entirely composed of leftover stuff that was sitting on my desk!

027: frida quote

the orange flower illustration was cut from a magazine ad, and accidentally ripped while i was getting ready to glue it down. so i ripped and wrinkled it more, and stuck it back together with washi tape. serendipity in action, darlings!  

028: abstract new york collage

this is from the day jeff and i went into the city to goof off. it's got part of a high line postcard as its base, a bodhisattva from the rubin museum brochure, and a bunch of random text. oh yeah and some tiny flying fish that have been in my leftovers pile for over a month. because-- weirdly enough-- they just totally WORK in this context, lol!!! :)

029: five last books

this was one of the prompts from the week five list, the typed card slides into the pocket i made from the empty seed packet; the base of the card is a bit of a (already falling apart when i found it!) paperback book cover

030: book quote

i had dymo-ed this quote to use on the ICAD above, but in the end it seemed kind of too big, so i decided to save it and let it be the star of this card, instead! (ps: hey, g: 'member these puppy stickers from thrift usa??!)

031: quilty layers

remember my sos quilt cards from a couple of weeks ago? well, i had a bunch of scraps leftover. they were too small to save but too big to toss, so i glued them randomly to an index card, but then i couldn't decide what else to do, so i put it aside, until the other night when i decided it needed LOTS of rub-ons, a leftover flower, and some twine. yep. that's what it needed, all right! :) :) :)

so have you guessed my favorite? actually, i quite like ALL of these, but if you guessed 028, you are right! i loved that day, i loved the little brochures and things we collected, and i loved coming home and gluing random bits to a card as a keepsake. plus... who doesn't love tiny flyin' fish??! i mean, c'mon!!! :) :) :)

PS: the index card a day project is devised and hosted by miss tammy of the daisy yellow art blog, and EVERYONE is welcome to participate! you don't have to catch up, just start... and have FUN! ♥♥♥

cavalcade of ICADs!

as with last year, i'm not having any trouble keeping up with the index card a day project... and i am love♥LOVE♥loving it again, too! but for some reason, i find it difficult to keep up with the photo-n-post part of the deal. it really shouldn't be hard, should it? i mean, it's only ONE extra pic per day. but somehow, i'm making it difficult. sooooooooo unlike me, lol! :) anyway, i did a big photo catch-up session and here they are, right up to last night's card! can i get a wahey?!

 017: stencils

my only rule for these cards is NOT to stop if i don't like how they're turning out. the first two rounds of stencilling were dull and weird, respectively, so i just kept layering stuff on top. finally, (perhaps in self-defense?) the card decided to start lookin' kinda cool!

018: postage stamp

i really like this one, i'm not sure why. well ok, it's got a vintage stamp, some hoarded ephemera, and i've used my beloved manual typewriter. mystery solved.

019: polka dots, take 1

some stencils, some marker, some patterned paper... nothing wrong with this, but i'm not in love

020: polka dots, take 2

my personal "just keep going" rule is a carry-over from last year; this year, tho, i've decided i can have a second go at any prompt that went awry. all the way up to the sewing, i was still on the fence, but to me it ties the whole thing together.

021: italy

multiple vintage travel book goodness, in all its splendor. and some felt thickers on top. va bene! :)

022: flat but layery collage

it's just paper and rub-ons. ok, a bunch of paper... and a lot of rub-ons, lol. too layery?? nahhhhhhh.

 023: summer

ok, yeah, i went a little mad with product here. but, you know, inna GOOD way! :) :) :)

024: quote

one of my art journaling mottoes: when in doubt, hand-stamp a buddha quote; in this case i wish i'd put the second "happiness" on the other side of the "is", because it'd be easier to read, but other than that, i like it. 

025: owl

i'm really really loving this sort of free-form paper-piecing type style, and this was fun to make. having said that, my owl (whom i modelled loosely after a hambly rub-on) kind of looks like a space alien. i think it's the eyes. yeah. it's the eyes. maybe i should rename this "U.F.Owl"? ok, see, now he looks kinda creepy cool. context, darlings! context!!! :)

it's not too late to ICAD with us... and it's sooooooooooooooo fun! think about it!!! ♥♥♥