Stripes

Happy New Year!

Yes, of course we're well into the new year now.  Many of you may have all your Christmas things packed safely away.  Not me.  I still enjoy gazing at the lights on the Christmas tree, playing Christmas CDs while I work and all.  I try not to see the aisles of pink and red hearts taking over Hobby Lobby right now.  I'm not ready for all that.  

I know.  I'll regret that in about a month. 

These past couple of month, as the holidays caught me by surprise, I had to, one by one, drop seemingly important things from my growing to-do list.  One thing that had to go were the card challenges.  I felt only a little pang of regret.   I'd recently applied for two design team positions and missed out on both...though I did make round two on one of them.  So maybe I was due for a step back and a deep breath.

Now I'm ready to jump back into the fold.

One thing I really enjoyed last year (besides my precious time on the CardMaker Blog Team!)  was participating in the challenges on the Serendipity Stamps Challenge Blog.  

If you've never checked out Serendipity Stamps before, make that a New Year's resolution!

The first challenge this year calls for stripes.

I wanted to use my new airplane stamp for a one-layer card.  (I bought one of these for both me and my sister, in honor of our cousin Kenny and uncle Bud.)   I brushed a bit of brown pastel on the card, using a cotton ball.  After stamping the plane, I used a kneaded eraser to remove pastel from areas of the clouds, creating highlights.

Then I added these stripes from Hero Arts and the sentiment from Avery Elle.

Hmmmmm.  It looks okay, I guess, but it wasn't really what I had in mind, so I started again.  Looked to me like this design needed a square card.  (So many of them do!)

For this version, I sponged sky blue and pink pastel in the background.  (You may not be able to see it in the picture, but it shows up beautifully in real life.)  This time a stamped the plane in black and the stripes in sky blue.  (Okay, if they look a little muddy, it's because I got a bit impatient and probably didn't clean that stamp as well as I should have!)

I like this one a lot better.

What do you think?

Thanks for stopping by!

I wish you all the best in 2016!

A Matter of Pride

When I create a piece of art, such as a calligraphed poem, a lot of me goes into it.  It's not just the time clocked planning the layout, doing the math, measuring margins, running to Hobby Lobby when my ink suddenly runs out mid-word.  No, each piece becomes part of me.  Throughout the day--and often into the night--I'm thinking how to best shape this flourish, paint the flower, create this effect, blend illustration and words.

When it's done, I carefully pack each one, sandwiched in between two pieces of stiff cardboard to keep it safe.  I take it to the post office.  I track it's journey.

Yesterday, I received a message from one of my most recent customers in the UK.  She'd requested the Yeats poem illustrated with English bluebells.

She wrote:

The poem and artwork is beautiful and the gift card was a wonderful surprise!
The package made it all the way to my front door in perfect condition. Whereupon the postman bent it and forced it through the box. Its badly creased top and bottom to the point it can't be ironed out. I'll be making an official complaint tomorrow morning.

I feel bad for her. She asked for this poem, chose the illustration, paid for it and waited for it to come.  And now it isn't even fit to hang!  I also feel bad for me.  It's a piece of me that postman unwittingly destroyed.  

I'm going to make my customer a new one.  No charge.  This wasn't my fault, no, but it's a matter of pride.  

Creating a Custom Poem

I got a request to "decorate" a poem, Cloths of Heaven by William Butler Yeats.   Reading and re-reading the poem, I pictured my calligraphy on a background of sky, with maybe the silhouette of a few grassy flowers in the foreground at the bottom.  "Make it a sunrise/sunset sky," my client suggested.  That did sound lovely.  I did the calligraphy (without a mistake the first time around!  How is that possible?) and loved this sky I created with pastels.

My client, who lives in the UK, wondered if I could make those foreground flowers be English flowers--English hyacinth or meadow buttercups.  The hyacinths are her favorites.  Looking at this poem again, I realized the sky is too dramatic to pair with a dainty flower.  

I went back to the drawing board (literally) this morning.

Which one would YOU choose?

To see more, or get your own custom calligraphed poem, visit me at www.thirdsisterhandmade.etsy.com

Thanks for stopping by!