Winter XXIII

Bird on a wire.*

Cold bird at the feeder.

I started the Winter cards in 1991, so XXIII (#23) confuses the math!  

(See Addendum for pix of all 23 Winter cards, plus the lone Crossroads card.)

Yes - I skipped a couple of years in the early 90s and then,

the postcard after Winter X was called Crossroads! = 3 non-Winters.

So that should make the math right...

I did make a prototype,

but the only difference between that and the final versions

was that I added the perfectly-named 'Ethereal' paper

- a tissue-thin/light fiber paper - to the bottom half of the cards.

The Fixin's

The Steps: The Movie:

The Steps

(a mere 7 steps this month/year!)

I started by tacking the silver paper behind the circular hole in the red and off-white sheet-music paper pieces, and decided to have some fun, since each piece was able to stand up on it's own:

It was going so well, that I decided to continue the fun:

Mustering my troops - my little paper army.  :-)  A total of 170+.

Reminded me of these ancient Chinese Terra Cotta soldiers:

Panels of 12 of the Winter XXIII postcards

Fin.

*Richard Thompson's rendition of this Leonard Cohen song:

**I sent out nice, store-bought cards, but felt like I was shortchanging my friends/loved ones, so I resumed making my own again in 1995.

Addendum - The Annual Winter Postcards + 1

Winter, 1991

 Winter II, 1992

 Winter III, 1995

 Winter IV, 1996

Winter V, 1997

Winter VI, 1998

Winter VII, 1999

Winter VIII, 2000

Winter VIX, 2001

Winter X, 2002

Crossroads, 2003*

Winter XI, 2004

Winter XII, 2005

Winter XIII, 2006

Winter XIV, 2007

Winter XV. 2008

Winter XVI, 2009

Winter XVII, 2010

Winter XVIII, 2011**

Winter XVIII, 2012

Winter XIX, 2013

Winter XX, 2014

Winter XXI, 2015

Winter XXII, 2016

Winter XXIII, 2017

*Crossroads: 2004 was a year of big transitions: I was turning 50, Mule retired after 30 years at IBM, and we decided to get married (after living together for 10 years).

**This was a printed postcard that I'd done for a BCA competition, and which I sent out instead of my usual, individually collaged cards that year because I was hustling to get all my Winter panels done for the debut 'Winter' show (Dec. 4, 2012 @ The Gruppe Gallery) - just didn't have time to make 150+ postcards that year!