the great 2018 ICAD wrap up

the index card a day project ALWAYS makes june and july fly by, but this year seemed to go especially fast! here are the last few cards, and at the end, my little handmade ICAD book as it appeared on day 1 and day 61!  

day 58: favorite color

if you asked me my favorite color every day for a month, you'd probably get 30 different answers. but... it must be said... i do love PINK! :)

day 59: staple

or in this case, staples, plural. fourteen, in fact. for my second-ever 14-staple collage!

day 60: mandala monday

if you really did ask me my favorite color every day for a month, there's a decent chance, on a couple of days, i'd say, "RAINBOW"!!!

(preferably a colorburst rainbow!)

day 61

one consistent thing in all of my years of ICAD, is that my day 61 is always a big THANK YOU to my art heroine, tammy garcia, for devising, hosting, inspiring, commenting, cheerleading and generally logisticizing (yes that is too a word) index card a day with unflagging enthusiasm every year. it's a HUGE undertaking, not to mention a huge gift to everyone who participates, for which i'm incredibly grateful!

ICAD book: day 1

slim and trim...

ICAD book: day 61

full of delicious memories and inspiration!

♥♥♥

many thanks to everyone who has followed along/endured all of the index card art over the last two months. should you, for some bizarre reason (chronic insomnia??) need to see all my ICAD blog posts, click this tag. if you'd like to just see all the cards, they're in order on instagram, and are in their own album on facebook.

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the end is near...

...the end of 2018's 61-day index card a day marathon, that is. we finish up on tuesday, after what has been, without doubt, the FASTEST june and july of all time: yowza! here are a few more cards, and i'll post the final wrap up the middle of next week.

day 54: tide pool

this year i haven't often used the (entirely awesome!) prompts that tammy generously devised and provided for the group. some years i do every single one, either because i'm enjoying the challenge of figuring out how to approach them, or because i'm not sure where to go on my own. this year i seem to have had (admittedly bizarre) ideas burning holes in my brain all summer, so i've mostly followed whatever i was "into" at the time. i think that's probably a good thing...?

day 55: circuit or network

a truly ODD one-staple collage, made entirely to show off the fact that i found a diagram of an electrical circuit to collage around! also: some rhinos, a bridge tally, a piece of magazine paper with a drawing of cassette tapes and a couple of unrelated stickers! 

(as random and unfocused as it is, i do really like this tho, lol)

day 56

a verrrrrrrry loose colorburst floral, made using the "smoosh" technique. with LOTS of doodles on top.

day 57: typewriter

this prompt was actually from monday, but i like to post mandalas on mondays, so i skipped past it. here's a flashback, lol. lots of typing-related goodies, including a dictionary illustration, a page from a typing exercise book and a torn, reversed, bit of an old-school mimeograph copy, cloaked the stainy purple ink of my 1970's elementary school days! :)

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hard to believe...

...we're already headed into the last full week of ICAD. where has july gone, eh?! meanwhile, here are my tiny index card masterpieces from the past week:

day 47: love

in this case i used the day's prompt as an excuse to include all the ingredients i LOVE to use in a collage: a tiny auto from "illustrated motorcars of the world", several varieties of ledger paper, my favorite ken oliver flower mandala stamp, and loads of ancient, imperfect rub-on transfers!

day 48

my found text (in english and french) reads, "and the fish, his name is leblanc" which pretty much sums up everything we need to know about this one!

day 49: 

a one-staple collage of random yellow things. because at 10:30pm that's how scientific my process is, lol. actually, that's often how my process is, regardless of time. in a way, it's based on an actual art principle: the designs we instinctively like have some sort of unifying factor. in this case, it's color. 

day 50

super, SUPER loose colorburst florals, painted "wet into wet" so that the shades blend and bleed into each other. with pitt artist pen outlines, applied after the card was thoroughly dry.

day51: mint

a collage which embodies the day's prompt in a way that makes sense! woohoo!!!

(incorporating, and pictured atop, a whole entire box of vintage slidemounts that my aunt judie gave me, do i even have to mention how much i looooooooooove them?!)

day 52: postage

another vintage ingredient i love, that's easy and inexpensive to collect: old stamps. again, i composed the background more or less by color. 

day 53: mandala monday

ledger paper, graph paper, notebook paper, text paper... i love paper... 

have i mentioned that recently??! :)

♥

i love mandala monday, also, and i hope yours is a particularly good one!

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index cards for everybody!!!

this summer could be subtitled, "more ICADs, less prompts" lol. i don't think there's ever been a year when i've so seldom worked with the themes that tammy g generously develops for us. it's not that i haven't liked them, i just seem to keep having ideas that are burning a hole in my brain, creatively. i *guess* that's a good thing, right?

day 40

another attempt at a collage adhered with washi tape. my favorite version so far, and much the closest to the idea i was going for... but still not quite exactly IT...

day 41

inspired by my friend susan's tiny, amazing, painted floral ICADs i had a go with colorburst, on a nice strong tabbed divider card. i forced myself NOT to outline... 

(but yeah: i still want to go back with a fine point pen and outline!)

day 42

a one-staple collage i really like!

day 43

i've been fascinated with mosaics lately. as in, "i'd love to take a tile mosaic class" but meanwhile, i think i'll play with bits of colorbursted watercolor paper. this is my first attempt to make a mosaic pretty similar in technique to the way you'd actually do it with tile. i think i might be cured, lol. it's just. sooooooooo. fiddly. ack. 

 day 44

collage cut-out flower with doodled leaves? yes, please!

day 45

i sat down with my colorbursts thinking, "abstract florals". well, i was half right!

day 46: mandala monday

i didn't set out to draw a peacock mandala, it just sort of happened, and i'm fine with that.

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have an excellent day and KEEP COOL, darlings!

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ICAD roundup: now even ICAD-ier!

would you like to see more index cards? because i just happen to have some right here. no pressure...

day 33(a and b): denim or blue

a couple of experiments with a new waterbrush featuring all of my favorite shades of blue and indigo colorburst. one is outlined with a pitt artist pen and one with machine stitching.

(for the record, ranger's TH waterbrush with the medium fine tip is still my favorite.)

day 34

random colorburst patterns with pitt pen (xs and s nibs) outlines on top. one of my "default modes" for nights when i have no particular idea to try out.

day 35: mosaic

this is the scrap of watercolor paper on which i used up my leftover colorburst from the "blue prompt" on day 33. i always wind up with a little too much CB out of the bottle, and i always have offcuts of watercolor paper, so i store the latter with the former, paint off the leftovers, and use them for diecutting or other essperiments. like making a mosaic, lol. i did a bit of random machine stitching after i had adhered all my "tiles" to the gridded index card, just to make sure they were all really going to stay. on. there.

day 36

it's orange... it's doodle-centric... it's vaguely leafy... with shadows! :)

day 37

as much as i love the cards that turn out beautifully, i kind of almost love the "not quiiiiiiiite makin' it" cards even more. in this case i was trying to make a collage using washi tape as my only adhesive. it wasn't an entirely successful idea, but it was really fun!

 day 38: palette

ok, technically the spectrum, but it's the basis on which many palettes are built. btw, i still love old school, analog, cut-stuff-outta-magazines collage. just sayin'... 

day 39: mandala monday

a scrap of colorburst watercolor flowers, some layers of gel print deli paper and a few posca pens. on my very last purple index card from a pack of funky assorted colors i got at target last year.

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have an AWESOME monday!!!

♥

if you don't like rainbows...

...this really is the wrong place for you, lol! because i like rainbows enough for both of us; especially during ICAD. look, here's one now!

day 26

yep, it's a colorburst rainbow on an extra heavy duty tabbed divider card... because those stand up to wet media soooooo much better than their ordinary flimsy bretheren 

day 27

not quiiiiiiiiiiiiiite a one-staple collage. nearly, but not quite. because i forgot to leave a "tail" on the lotus picture, so i would've had to overlap and lose either part of the lotus or part of the caption. so i made an executive decision.

day 28: garden

i had this idea about fragmenting the floral illustration into a sort of layered collage. it didn't quite work. but that's what's awesome about ICAD, you know you have 61 days, which means you don't need to do anything perfectly the first (or second!) time!

day 29: patisserie

ok, admittedly, it's a very loose take on "patisserie"; i made little vintage paper pies. sorta. i did say LOOSE...

day 30: playing card or tarot

what are the odds that someone (stephanie, in fact) would send me some amazingly lovely russian playing cards on the same day the prompt was "playing cards". pretty unlikely, i'd say... but that's what happened!

day 31: curtain

i think was the only kid in 8th grade science class who laughed when our teacher told this joke. i still think it's funny. so there! :)

day 32: mandala monday

and we've come full circle with another colorburst rainbow, this time the background for a really loose mandala.

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i hope you have an absolutely awesome monday and that you find a tiny bit of time to make something just because it'd be fun to make!

this is the week that was

at least, these are all the index cards i made for ICAD last week. some are funky, some are fab, but all of them were *fun* which is the main thing!

day 19

on this evening, i realized that altho i had used one of my beloved tiny cars from the book "illustrated motorcars of the world" on my ICAD cover, i hadn't yet used one inside the book. obviously unacceptable.

day 20

some years i pick a theme or skill to focus on, some years one seems to pick me. or at least... one evolves without conscious thought on my part. this year the recurring thing is that i'm apparently slightly obsessed with making handcut patterns, and then sewing on them. often these little fads just peter out, occasionally they turn into something really cool that later becomes valuable. either way, it's a big part of the point of ICAD for me, so i don't even try to fight it.

day 21

it's hard to tell from the photo, but the light pink areas on this card are actually a plain pink index card peeking thru BEHIND the slashes i cut from the purple and dark pink swooshy colorburst-painted divider card that's on top. because again with the patterns... using both the positive and negative space...

day 22: sky

i really did intend to make something based on the day's "sky" prompt, thus i started with the bird and a strip torn from some blue-ish, grey-ish gel printed fabric. the end product isn't especially sky-centric, however... ah well...

day 23: 14-staple collage

years ago, during ICAD, tammy g had written a list of inspirational ideas, one of which was "stapled collage". i interpreted that-- for some reason-- to be a collage where all the bits are held together with ONE STAPLE. which is harder than it sounds, actually. and i became utterly obsessed. then tammy and a couple of ICAD-ettes decided to have a go, and it just sort of went back and forth like that. every year since then, at some point during ICAD, someone raises the subject again, and we all giggle and have a go. finally getting to the point with regard to THIS card: the other day, tammy posted a really neat, freeform, rainbow collage of paper scraps, which was held together with 14 staples, partly bc she wanted to see if it would work, and partly, as she said when she tagged me, to make me laugh. which it totally did. but of course i also saw it as a bit of a throwdown, lol.
challenge accepted!!!!!!

day 24

not a stapled collage, just a regular one. truth be told, i chose most of my elements by color for this one. most of my collages start by me flipping through a random pile of stuff, and choosing some things that appeal to me right then. as i choose, i often notice a theme emerging: the same color, or maybe a bunch of typefaces, or possibly similar shapes or... well... something; and then my choices become less random and more a question of what would go well with the other things. it's a bit like doing a jigsaw puzzle. except you've lost the lid to the box, so you don't actually know what the finished picture looks like.

(proving once more that i'm better at making collages than at explaining how, lol.)

day 25

brings us up to TODAY, mandala monday, june 25, 2018. this might be my favorite mandala i've ever made, because it looks like the picture that was in my head, and incorporates a grungy mixed media(ish) background, a real life/photo element, and some hand drawn doodles, all TOGETHER. somewhat in the style of my collage and journal idol, jenndalyn, but still my own thing.

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i hope you're having a pretty good day, but if not, there are still four more chances this week... and then a weekend to recharge! 

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happy mandala monday

do you have time for a few more index cards? (...let's pretend you 've said yes to that, lol...) awesome, here they are now!

day 14: flamingo

i've been doing some of the optional prompts, but usually not on their official day. in this case, a big part of my inspiration was making something with that cool, somewhat hoarded, vintage flamingo seal thingie... more specifically, making something i would get to KEEP!

day 15: cobblestones

for some reason i've very into making patterns this year, from torn, cut, diecut or punched papers. these "cobblestones" are made from a gel print featuring rainbow shades of colorburst that i tore into little pebble-y shapes and stitched upon, quite crazily, where the grout would be.

day 16: sea green

or rather, THE SEA (sorta) and it is green.

(more torn and stitched pattern action... ocean waves this time...)

day 17a

another pattern, this time punched and inlaid circles of various sizes. and then... surprise... stitching! 

day 17b

after i finished the card above, i had several pastel index cards with multiple circles punched in them, and i started shuffling them around, in various layer combinations. i think i almost like the collage of negative space circles more than the original idea. i'm pretty sure this is a concept i'll be revisiting.

day 18

and thus we come to one more mandala monday. this one is composed of fabric layers from a coordinating set of flower sack prints that my friend anna gave me. i think i should've alternated plain and printed fabric layers so the mandala shapes would stand out more, but i was having so much fun with the pretty prints! 

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i hope you're having a really good monday so far, and that it will improve with age!