November's Postcard of the Month

This month's image was inspired by the corn stubble left poking up in the fields after the fall harvest.

I got pretty attached to the corn stubble making it's way into this card:

And these little paper-punched Maple leaves:

 

And these paper-punched stalks (with over-stamped Queen Anne's Lace):

I got on a paper-making bender for a while at the end of summer, and these (above), were punched out of some of the black paper that I made. 

Thanks to my friend, Karin Stafford, I started using  large embroidery hoops (thus the round shape) - with screening - instead of rectangular frames to strain the pulp. 

I also used some of the (pre-embroidery hoop) white paper I made:

The fixin's:

 Prototype:

The prototype is pretty close to the final version; it has 2 more leaves and lacks the splashes of orange and apricot that I added to the bottom left.

 

Here are the TWENTY SEVEN steps!!

All 21, curly, cards:

 I always have to press the cards under heavy books for several hours, once done and dry, to flatten 'em out - the watery glue causes a lotta curling!

OPEN STUDIO! 
My studio will be open today and tomorrow in conjunction with the statewide Open Studio weekend.
I have lots of goodies!

Collages (of course):

 Flip books:

Masks:

Angels:

 And...  Snowglobes!

This is my entry in the Burlington City Arts Vermont Postcard Contest! 

 https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151130983096631.417864.24632871630&type=1&l=404ebe24b5
Voting ends at 5pm on Friday!   Please vote for my piece if you like it!  The winners (2) will have copies of their artwork available at the Vermont Welcome Centers!  Pretty NICE!

October's Postcard of the Month

This one was all about the carrots. 

I grew these pretty, red-skinned carrots (orange on the inside) this year:

And, I had this tiny little carrot stamp that I really wanted to use.

But could I find it anywhere??!   I even went back to the store where I'd found it, to buy another.  NO!  Not only had they sold 'em all, they weren't ordering from the carrot stamp company again!!

BUT!!  Convinced that it was still somewhere in my studio, after a thorough sort-through of various messy stashes of materials that I'd put off dealing with for YEARS, yup, I found it.  So then, of course, I had to use it...

 

This month, temporarily, was also about BEETS!!  I love beets, so I made a couple of beet cakes (like carrot cake - GOOD!!), beet salad...  And I saved the beautiful, bleeding skins.  And decided to make some PAPER (for the first time ever), using the beet skins!   Just threw them in the blender with my paper pulp, and, VOILA: 

Looks pretty cool (although not nearly as red as I'd thought it would be...), but it was really thick and crude!  I really wanted to use it in this month's collages, but it did not work well.  It did however get me really hot to make more paper! 

So, on another sunny afternoon, I made this paper:

I used: metaliic thread, corn silk, flower petals, sheet music in with the pulp, and I'd MEANT to throw in some little gold foil pieces, but I forgot...  I didn't use this paper in this collage, but I did use it in my Burlington City Arts Vermont Postcard Design Contest entry!!

 

As for October's cards, merely one prototype later:

I was ready to roll.  23 steps this time.   And, this time, along with taking pix of the panels of 21 cards at each step of the process, I also I followed one card through each step:

This odd little orange 'bridge' was some last minute mitigation - I hadn't wanted this orange paper to cover that entire lower l. side...

And here I start to close up that opening!

And TA DA!!  Red carrot.

 Here are the panels of 21, step by step.