Postcard & ATCs

My July Postcard for Pippa

It must be the season (cold wintry weather) but I am in a bit of a "fallow" state creativity wise. I have a head full of ideas but don't seem to be able to settle down and actually do much with them. I am finding easiest to work on things that have to be done such as monthly exchanges etc. Nothing like a commitment or a deadline to motivate me!!Yesterday I finished my Calendar Girl Postcard for July. This month it was my turn to make one for Pippa and it is actually the month that Pippa chose the Calendar Page so a little bit of added pressure!! (Not really, but you sort of know that if someone picked a picture they really liked it so you want it to inspire something they are going to like as well!!)

As soon as I saw the picture (which is the glorious photo of the glacier above) I knew I wanted to do something that was textural and that would focus on the bottom two thirds of the picture - ie not the sky. So I started with a piece of fabric paper "a la Beryl Taylor" that I had previously made with a calico (apparently called muslin the US) base, torn pieces of scrapbook paper and a crumpled (then flattened) Monet napkin as the top layer. I had dry brushed it with gesso to emphasize the wrinkles.

This was what the base layer of fabric paper looked like before I added multiple layers!

I decided it needed a lot more texture so I added some more layers of torn and crumpled napkins using the inside layers to get a subdued colour. Once they were dried I continued with the dry brushing of gesso and then added Quink Ink layers in blue and black to get some depth. More gesso, some sprays of Glitz Spritz to get the brighter blue at the top and then I ironed on a Pelmet Vilene backing. At this point I discovered the Quink Ink is reactivated by heat(!!) and that it even spread further so after machine stitching around the edges I went back and added some more gesso (surprise, surprise) to emphasize the mountains. Then for a bit of sparkle I added just a little turquoise Suze Weinberg Ultra Effects and some Judikins silver roxs. Not sure why I ever bought either product (including several other colours of the roxs) as I can never think of anything to do with them. At least now they have had a little use!

Yesterday I also finished my ATCs for a small group swap - this month it was Doreen's turn to pick the theme and she chose "Black & White + One" and we all had to chose different accent colours. I went for bright orange! I used a lace patterned napkin and adhered it to cardstock and then cut out the lace shape and stitched it to the orange fabric layer, adding a black ribbon and white button (I was determined not to use a flower this month!!). and some adhesive pearls. I knew it needed something else and I tried a lot of different things but in the end I covered each button with Dimensional Magic and a punched out alphabet letter to match the recipient's name. There was one spare which has a "6" and black "gems" instead and that has now been traded (edited 15 July). I have received two of the ATCs for this month already but I will save them until I have received them all and share them then.

A close-up - needless to say the button was too dimensional for the scanner to cope with!!

Spare ATC - (Now traded)

Now for something completely different - have you discovered "Spezify" yet???? It is wonderful and such a great way to spend even more hours on the net!! It is a search engine that gives you multiple results at once. Try "mixed media" or "fabric collage" or even your own name - it is fascinating what comes up and it so visual. I'm seriously addicted - maybe that is why I haven't been doing much ...