August's Postcard of the Month

Cows in the Corn.

Much quieter than July's!  And I went from inspiration to end product more directly than usual, too.

I have no photos of the scene that inspired this one*, but I passed the cows grazing, sort of hidden by the tall grasses by the road on the way from home to the studio, and that was that!  

Oddly - I never saw them grazing there again until this morning, on my way down the hill, there they were again, and me with my NEW CAMERA!  And no good spot to stop and shoot!

So what I did first was find some cow images that I liked 

then I tweaked 'em and printed out a sheet

 and proceeded to cut out LOTS of little cows!  

I wasn't quite sure how I was going to configure them, so I wanted to have a few options.

Prior to cow inspiration, I'd thought maybe something w/ the omnipresent Day lilies might work, 

and, since we'd had some fab paper-making weather (dries nice and fast in the hot sun), 

I thought I'd try to make a Day Lily orange:

Came out more like orange sherbert!  (cell phone pix have not been at ALL true to color!**)

Not used in this month's cards.

But I still wanted a little color counterpoint to all that green and blue.

The original prototype didn't yet have the (corn?) stalk in the lower l. corner:

and, for the stalk, I had in mind colors that none of my papers really had - 

I tried this marbled black.grey/gold, which was ok, but still not quite what I wanted:

BUT!  While perusing my myriad of materials, I DID happen upon some of the maps that I'd hung on to from the trash bag full of old maps Dad had passed on to me before his recent move:

 

These particular maps traced the routes of some of his great canoe trips years ago 

 - some in far northern NH wilderness, w/ his good friend, our 'Uncle' Dick, 

and some marking our route for many trips down the Ipswich River from our backyard in MA.  

There was no way I was ready to sacrifice these artifacts to art yet!  

So....  I decided to just 'make' my own funky paper - colored similarly to the maps:

Quick and dirty - slapped and splashed paints over newsprint text - I used newsprint 

because the paper punch I was using was being really really picky re: what papers I fed it!  

And I know all the tricks with these temperamental (that word is spelled really oddly) suckers 

and nothing was tricking this one.  

But it did fine w/ newsprint, and I liked some of the text peeking through.

So - here are MOST of 

The Fixins!  

Never took a photo of the stalks after I punched 'em out.

 

And here are the (relatively few - again!) 

Steps

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

 Step 5

 Step 6

 Step 7

 Step 8

 Step 9

Step 10

Step 11 - Ah!  I really wished I'd used a lighter yellow/green to mute the notes here!

 Step 12

 Step 13

 Step 14

 Step 15 - ooops!  Got so excited adding the first cow here that I scraped the edge of the 'hill' 
there on the left and didn't notice for a few more steps!

 Step 16

Step 17

 Step 18 - this addition's hard to see - just a little strip of green on the low horizon, r.

Step 19

Step 20 - Can't believe this is the first time I've used this stamp for PoMs!  One of my favorites.

Step 21 - There.  Cows in the corn.  :)

Panel of 21 of August's PoMs

Fin.

*I did manage to stop the next day and at least got a photo of the herd that inspired this month's card:

They are not in quite the same place/configuration as the scene I first saw and liked, but same cows!  

Took this photo (same herd) after 'publishing' this blog already - closer to the muse scene!

**I've been using my cell phone camera these past weeks since I MOWED OVER MY CAMERA,

 and while right before I got my NEW CAMERA (for my 60th b-day) 

I did manage to get some pretty nice pix - like this w/ one of the MANY bumblebees:

 I am SO happy to no longer have to use the cell for pix!!

Here's a sampler of what (other than a lot of great family visits) my month's been about -

Veggies and herbs and flowers oh my:

Puny garlic harvest this year (again, actually... we'll plant some larger bulbs this fall) 

but I love how they look.  I'll braid them soon.

 I made - deep fried - stuffed squash blossoms while niece Polly was visiting!  

They were rather sublime - tempura battered them before frying.   YUMM.

Look who I found when I turned flipped up the couch cushions (on the deck) one dewy morning:

And our bees are doing well!  May even have honey to spare/extract this year.  :)

Mule was giving niece Polly a bee tutorial.  More over-dressed than usual - friendly bees!

We got our winter wood delivery:

And finally, a shot of us color-coordinated Scrabble players the other day.  

The colors were much prettier than this cell photo indicates!

Actually - here's the grand finale (of footnotes) SIXTIETH BIRTHDAY pix!

My Mule-made birthday Lei:

New camera extras, and celebratory detritus!

 Oh yeah, I'm in the rags now!!  :)