January's Postcard of the Month
Happy WHITE New Year!!!  

Well, it was white - right up 'til the rain that's right now making everything look about as un-lovely as it ever looks in Vermont as I write this...   It has indeed been lovely these past several icy, snowy, treacherous weeks.  

 Oh, yeah, there was ice.  And this was early on...

Oh, yes, a winter wonderland.  

I took MANY photos but they all started looking the same (and like EVERYONE else in the NE's ABUNDANT Facebook ice storm aftermath photos).  So, that, and the fact that I've cut WAY down on venturing far from the wood stove for the past few weeks, has cut WAY down on my usually enthusiastic 'shooting' lately.   

I had drafted a couple of options re: which way I wanted to go with this month's card 

- before the ice storm and the scenes above! 

But then!   Necessity offered up a whole new angle!

What Happened? 

Well, since I was more house-bound than I'd planned to be as Christmas approached, I was also in Scrounge Mode re: collage materials to make a card for (beekeeping) Mule.  

A couple from previous years:

Happily, not only did I have a nice little glue stick on hand (not my customary adhesive medium, but just swell to find stashed in the kitchen junk drawer), but I'd also brought home a bunch of rubber stamps, which I'd (cleaned first and then) used to make imprints on the batches of DELICIOUS IF I DO SAY SO MYSELF gluten-free shortbread I'd made.   :)   My trusty little deer stamp looked the best.  

And that being so handily on hand, along with some appealing wrapping-paper that I'd salvaged from last year's family holiday gathering - PLUS some wrapping paper I'd bought just because it had sheet music all over it! - plus plenty of other wrapping-paper stars, squiggles and dots oh my, I came up with this for (deer-pursuing*) Mule:

Which I was quite pleased with.  :)

And so, with the 11th hour looming, I (finally) headed back to the studio 

and worked up some other (pre-deer stamped) versions:

I would have used the same paper to frame the scene as I'd done with Mule's card, 

but I didn't have enough left!  I've been milking the salvaged pieces 

of this old favorite paper for a while now...

The Fixin's:

The Steps

Right back to MANY multiple steps this month!  

Step 1

 Step 2

 Step 3

 Step 4

 Step 5

 Step 6

 Step 7

 Step 8 - new notes!  From a roll of wrapping paper that's covered with sheet music!

 Step 9

Step 10

 Step 11 - this silver foil comes courtesy of the teabag packaging that my friends,

 Barb & Meg, were kind enough to save for me!

 Step 12

 Step 13

 Step 14

 Step 15 - Riesen's candy wrapper foil here.

 Step 16 - left over strips from last month's river/path paper

 Step 17

 Step 18

 Step 19 - I've been dying to somehow incorporate this patterned paper into a collage!  TA DA!

Step 20

 Step 21

 Step 22 (which is also step 23) - 

I added both the silvery 'sprinkles' (upper l.) and 'stamped' the deer.

But then!!  I decided I preferred how the silvery spikes and threads - 

lower l. in the one above - looked over on the right instead.  So....

This photo of the 21 postcards was taken mid-way through production, and then I never made it back to the studio, so I forgot to take a final shot!

*Not so successfully bagging any in recent years.  (Maybe that's what living with an only-by-reflex-kills-bugs vegetarian for 20+ years'll do to one's yen to kill?!)   Though there was a moose (>> new freezer) a few years ago...  So what Mule does instead is 'shoot'  them with his nifty Game Cam that's mounted down in a tree stand out back:

:)

December's Postcard of the Month
December's postcard is also the year's 'Winter' card.   My annual labor of love!  These are the tendrils of myself (and Mule) that connect us to all those people who mean/have meant so much to us over the years.

And, because I make quite a lot of these (160, this year!), for sending through the mail

and since I'll be touching each card probably 5 times, minimum - just to address and stamp 'em! - 

I need to annually come up with a simple composition that doesn't have a lot of essential small or fragile bits that won't make it through postal handling.  And, I also need to have enough materials!  

So, the fewer the steps...  Only 8 this time!

Nascence

How this composition came about:  I was watching a (not-very-good) Netflix show on my laptop sometime this past summer, and saw this wintry scene:

And, immediately thought: "THIS YEAR'S WINTER CARD".  (Looks like I'm about to grab the moon!)

First iteration: 

While I liked this, I still felt like it lacked something.

So - thanks to the thoughtful feedback from a new friend - a nice zig-zagging river/path right up to the horizon was the solution we hatched. 

Which then entailed finding material that gave the proper effect of a river/path winding towards the moon, reflecting some of that shine.  

So...  >>>  newspaper and silver spray paint:

onto which I further swirled some black and gold paint.

160 (+) rivers/paths:

The foils that I stripped from these old Riesen candy wrappers of Mule's:

became the 'moons'.

More of the Fixin's:

  

The Steps 

Step 1

 Step 2

 Step 3

 Step 4

 Step 5

 Step 6

 Step 7

 Step 8

The first 21:

  

Happy Winter!!

Yule Mule