How did Monday get here so fast?

#212

#218

 Here's a group of four altered postcards. #212 is another of my honey's cards from his Evidence Box series. I added the woman in the foreground and the moth.



I think it's clear what I added in the other cards.

#62

#68

#220

#70

 I've enjoyed having the large selection of boring cards from Sylvia. If you'd like a couple boring cards to alter, let me know and send them to you. I've plenty to share.

#69

#219

Yesterday's and today's cards take a different turn. Totally different, right? I used images cut from magazines, some art works, some not, to create two and three part compositions.
#220 & #70 are more successful for me than the first two that I did in this vein. I'll see what I can come up with tomorrow. Maybe I like those best because I use bits of de Kooning and Sam Francis paintings in them.

 How exciting, just a few days after we had snow on the ground, we have these. The purple helibore/Lenten rose was in my back yard this morning! I was so happy to see it.

In the front garden, we have several of these plants in white and they are in bloom like crazy! It feels like spring.

Saturday night Mail Art catch up

#215

#216

#217

 Gosh, these look nice as a little grouping.  An altered Picasso postcard, a bird in a gallery looking at an image I inserted, a Matisse woman looking out at us for International Woman's day! These are for my 365.2 Mail Art project.

#65

#66

#67

These next three are for my 365.3 Mail Art project - an altered Picasso postcard, an owl hanging out in an architectural setting with an altered window, and a mother and child from a 1956 National Geographic Magazine in recognition of International Women's Day.

















These are the cards Wednesday through Friday of this week. It's already late on Saturday and I've not scanned my cards for the day. I just finished making them, running late today because I've been busy finishing up some knitting, while watching episodes of Firefly on DVD. A very relaxing Saturday!

My African violets are so gorgeous right now. That green plant in the foreground is my miniature rose bush. I don't see any more buds on it, but I'm hoping for another little rose eventually. I am liking these flowering plants very much.

More of the usual plus the unusual

#213

#63

 Monday, I switched direction away from my minimals. I wanted to try out my new Cavallini rubber stamps. Oh I do like them, having to do with postal things. Even those waving lines to cancel faux postage.

#64

#214

I used a nice gray card board, the backing for the stamps that I receive in the mail, and tore up a 2010 estimate for ridding our house of termites. Turned out that we didn't have any. Hah! Used postage stamps from Finland and tiny cut out squares from some other project came in handy.






Here are two more in this series.
Fun with stamps. These are from a different Cavallini set that my honey got for me awhile ago.









And the rubber stamps on this one are from my collection of postal franks and immigration stamps.

 Here's our surprise yesterday -  ususual, snow falling! We didn't get a lot but it was cold and very windy. The valley region to the west and north of us got LOTS of snow. I heard some places got 30".  Wow, memories of my childhood.

Here's another unusual thing - a snapping turtle that we saw at the Maymont nature center last week. It was so prehistoric looking. One of the staff told us that mature one's spend all their time in the water, but when it was less-mature (I guess) they used to have a ramp in the tank so it could climb up out of the water. One day, they came into the center and found this guy taking a stroll!
What a surprise for them!

Saturday, Mail Art catch up continuing

#59

 The two pieces of mail art that I completed on Thursday used my default - circles! I was tight with time, having house guests so the default was a perfect solution. The use of the black background always make the color stand out nicely. I really like the way these quickly done pieces look.

#209

#210

#60

 Friday, I found perfect bits to add to the Chuck Scalin assemblage cards. Especially the two seated women. They are a perfect foil for the serious faces in the background.

I like that I added only the small image between the hands to #60. A simple solution that changes the card immensely.

#211

#61

 Here we go on Saturday - altered cards again. I gave myself a big smile by putting this Bollywood dancer onto the street at Times Square. He added such life to the black and white photo. I could almost hear the music playing with the tabla percussion.








This turned out to be a rather sweet image. I'm always stymied by the bouquet of flowers card. I think this is the last of them that I purchased at the big VMFA sale a couple years ago. The little Victorian scrap worked out okay.

On Friday afternoon, we managed to pop into the Nature Center at Maymont Park. The otters, Neptune and Pandora, were asleep, but a helpful staff member woke them for us. They came down to a lower level, where Pandora proceeded to entertain us by swimming acrobatically in the water. Neptune slept and didn't even awake when his partner kept nudging him. They are so much fun to visit. I recommend otter watching to make you feel uplifted.

Oh dear, Saturday already? Mail Art catch up

#206

#56

 These are altered Chuck Scalin assemblage cards. I'm having a really good time with these. Thanks to my honey for giving me his cast offs. The woman has eyes that remind me of my mother's. Mom is on my mind a lot these days.

#57

#207

 I was fortunate to find several of the same notices about our state library ancestry services. There was this great old photo that I am making good use of, by cutting out the people in it. They work nicely with the old paper.

#58

#208

I recently received some old knitting pattern magazines. In #56 I make my first attempt at using a bit from one of them. More experimentation is needed with them.










I'm using an old show card that I brought from Paris last winter. I'm not sure this is my most successful solution with this particular card but it had to do as I was rushing to produce 2 cards on this day, since I had company arriving.

This elephant is here just for fun. He's in the main hall of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. He or she is quite gorgeous. It's huge and magestic.

Mail Art Monday, some clouds, and flowers

#204

#54

#205

 These are the last of the past week's color and circle pieces.

It's difficult for me to stop with a series like this, once I get the feeling for it.

#55

The possibilities are endless. One could continue to "study" the relationships between shape and color endlessly.











I began to see these pieces of Mail Art as sketches for paintings. I think that if I had a larger studio, I might consider doing large paintings again - that looked just like this.







But the reality is, I'm better off doing small works (4" x 6") and mailing them off to other people. I don't have to worry about storage this way. But wouldn't they be fun reeeaaallllyyyy BIG?

 The clouds were so lovely puffy yesterday. I'd gone off in search of something to put between two layers of fabric to make a blanket and remembered the little quilting store at Willow Lawns shops. When I returned to my car, I looked up - lovely blue sky, lovely puffy clouds.

When we went up to Washington, D.C. last week, we stopped at the Natural History Museum of the Smithsonian to get some coffee in their cafe. To our delight, there was an exhibit of Orchids of Latin America. 

The orchids were AMAZING and the scent in the room was wonderful. What a treat. There were orchids that looked like corsages, and others that looked like butterflies, or crabs, or insects. And we saw the orchid plant that produces vanilla pods. I'd never seen that before.
I love surprises!

Friday update

#201

#51

#52

 These are Wednesday's cards. They use sample colors from some paint line. The top color in #201 was trimmed so only the word "earth" can be seen. On the reverse I wrote " Someday, I hope that we will all be patriots of our planet and not just of our respective nations." (Zoe Weil)

#202

#203

#53

These are the cards from Thursday. I decided to us a neutral background rather than white to see how that works. I like it. Less contrast, of course, than with the white ground, but still the black keeps the colors vibrant.











No quotes on these yet.









I am really happy with today's cards. Somehow, they just look right.


Do you have those moments with your art work where the final piece just looks right and you don't need to do anything more to it?







I'm slowly using up the colored paper that belonged to my old friend (now deceased 2 years) and as I'm using it, I think of her. These are kind of memorial pieces I'm thinking. Inadvertently, memories of her.

Here's the shelf/cupboard in it's current rendition. So sweet. Someone put a nice ceramic handmade inspiration plaque above it. Things come and go. We still love this little urban shrine to whatever.
We're supposed to get snow or rain or something over night. If there's a nice dusting of snow, I'll go around to this and take a snowy photo of it.