February's Postcard of the Month

Oh, did this one come hard!

One afternoon last winter, on one of my weekly I-89 runs back north from Lebanon, shortly before the Randolph exit, at @ mile marker 29, I came upon a stunning play of light on tree tops.  The sun was low in the sky, so the vivid PINK rays hit only the top branches (I think they were mostly Poplars), turning them into brilliant, shining pink jewel-flames against the rather dark, angry sky behind them.   I could see it happening from quite far away, and as I got closer, and the light sustained, it became more and more surreal.

This was what I wanted to convey in February's card.   Unfortunately,  this sight pre-dated my current cell-phone camera use habituation...  And I really felt a need to study this particular light play in order to render some close approximation.  I could remember the general effect, but not specifically what lights and darks were playing off eachother, what the foreground looked like, other information I wanted to revisit.

So, I went online. looking for similar winter light plays, and was a little surprised that nothing was exactly right!  

These two photos had similar effects (I neglected to note the photographers to credit them here...):

As did this painting I found, titled "Winter Light", by Becky Joy:

And then my friend Joanne Vecchiola sent me a selection of her own gorgeous winter light on trees photos, several of which also had similar effects:

But nothing was exactly IT!!

So, every Monday, all this winter, I'd drive home from NH, my mind pleading "PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE happen again!"  Most Mondays, I knew the light wasn't close to right.   And so the weeks, the month of January, flew by, and I still didn't have just the right reference picture.   And I made little,  unsatisfactory progress on my prototypes as my (self-imposed) deadline approached.  Until finally,   I just went for it - sans reference - and trusted that some 11th hour magic would take hold, and all that I'd retained of that sight would somehow be accessible!

Then, this past Monday - AFTER I'd already finished production! - on the way both there and back, I was mercilessly teased with almost identical light conditions!  I thought for sure, I'd get to mile marker 29, JUST at the right moment for photos, for sure!  I had the cell phone ready, had the breakdown lane all scoped out, but, NO.  No such magic!!  

So, I have to be satisfied for now with my memory of that gift of a sight, and relatively happy with my representation of the moment.  

I labored (it was not very happy play) through a few prototypes before I settled on the elements that I thought would work.
This first one was cute, but not strong enough.

Here's a prototype in pinned mode:

Haven't had to use pins in a while!  All those teeny little tree limbs just snagged in each other, got bent, curled...  If one moved, they all moved.  I used tweezers and long pins to position almost all the small elements in these cards.  

I snipped the 'feet' off (most of) the trees in this one, but still too dull...

This one (with the new red 'lace' paper that I was dying to use) got me close enough to know what I wanted to do to make it all go a little deeper, richer.

Several hundred paper-punched  trees!   Punching most of these papers was tricky - I often had to sandwich them between pieces of more substantial paper.  

These pink foil tree tops were the trickiest.  I punched them out of foil that I'd found wrapped around a potted Coleus that one of my mother's friends had brought to her during the holidays.  After punching 'em, I laid them on a piece of felt to hold them in place and keep them from sustaining all the annoying little kinks that seemed to happen if you just breathed too hard around them...

So, January drew to a close, and I still hadn't started production!  But by Friday, February 1st, I had all my materials cut, snipped, punched, torn - ready to go.

  

Some of the fixin's.

And on Saturday the 2nd, I steadily plugged through about 6 hours of production - 21 cards, 22 steps. 

I really wish there was a way of viewing these steps horizontally here instead of vertically.  The step-by-step, when viewed horizontally, looks like an animated cartoon!   It's really fun, makes me laugh every time I run through them fast.  (Thus my inspiration for the flip books that I made last summer.)

Step 1 - I also added some fire, right off in this final version.

 Step 2 - And I also added this purple behind the blue, to make the sky look a tad more dramatic.

 Step 3

 Step 4 - New WHITE 'lace'!!

Step 5 - Ah!  My new red 'lace'!

 Step 6 - This black thready trim was just what I thought it needed.

 Step 7 - The careful placement of these first 2 copper trees made every next step a beautiful, mathmatical equation.

 Step 8

 Step 9

Step 10

 Step 11

 Step 12

 Step 13

 Step 14

 Step 15

 Step 16 - Oh yeah - the music!

 Step 17

 Step 18

 Step 19

Step 20

 Step 21

Step 22

Ta Da:

Done.  And, basically, on time. (I promise the cards to arrive to subscribers the first week of every month.)   

And, yes, they are February's postcards, so I made them a little Valentine-y by shaping the tree formation as a heart.  And adding a pink foil heart, and a few little heart-like shapes (the snipped tree 'feet') in the 'sprinkles'.  And a red heart, a bit broken, for how broken-hearted I am not to have seen this sight again!  Yet.