I wanted the composition to be an impression of my luxuriant summer afternoons -
the lush greens and blues:
- the darting - and pausing - of the busy birds:*
and insects:
Initial slap down:
Which turned into this:
In the final iteration, I eliminated that 4th vertical
- I didn't like how it bisected the dragonflies -
and added the sparkling green in the lower left.**
I'd wanted to incorporate some indication of the dappling, jewel-like greens
of the late afternoon shadow-play on the grass.***
I also wanted to figure out a way to incorporate some little bit of rubber stamping.
So... since I didn't have a Dragonfly stamp, nor anything else that suited,
I decided to make Dragonflies using a sideways upper-case 'X' stamp and a lower-case 'i' stamp:****
Clevah, eh? ;-)
I stamped onto this pale green tissue paper that had a nice sheen to one side.
I used my 2 Dragonfly paper punches and 5 different shiny papers/foils
to punch out 200+ little Dragonflies.*****
The Fixin's
July's Postcard Production Steps >> The Movie:
The Steps: 1-33
Quartet of notes >> nascent Dragonflies? :-)
Tissue paper:
Really fine, soft rice paper:
Heavier rice paper:
A couple more tissues next:
Some scrumptious Lokta paper:
More tissues:
This dark green Kozo paper is one of my staples:
I've been wanting to use this water-evoking paper since I picked it up nearly a year ago!
A couple of nice marbled papers next:
This wonderful, summery, watery rice paper:
And I love using this - surprisingly easy to use - waxy, tie-dyed paper:
Black 'lace' paper:
And green 'lace' paper - to bring some depth to the center here:
Black/gold/silver marbled paper for the verticals:
I did consider stopping at this step:
But I like it much better with my quartet of poised-to-launch 'letter' Dragonflies:
Panel of 21 of July's postcards:
Fin.
*The Snowy Woodpecker is picking off the yummy, sugary ants from the Hummingbird feeder. :-)
**The hole punching of the dark green, and then the tacking into place of the custom-fit strip of bright light-green foil - another from Lake Champlain Chocolates - Thank You, Andrea :-) - are some of several pre-production steps.
***The full photo:
Mule readying his ride (PKMULE) for Laconia Bike Week.
****from one of my several (12) sets of (small) alphabets.
****Punching foils is tricky -
they need to be sandwiched between stiffer paper - construction paper or printer paper -
in order to come out crisply.
