This is my cat postcard for Sunday Postcard Art. The cat and ladder are separate images which were resized to fit together and I went to Yahoo Babel Fish to find the word cat in different languages. The color of the text strip block was eyedroppered from my tortoise cat’s fur colors in Photoshop. The background is scrapbooking paper and the card itself is cut and glued, not digital.
Mary
This is my digital collage for this week’s Sunday Postcard Art Turquoise theme. I used photos of my kitchen window and one of my quilts, created a background using Photoshop filters, and added one of my favorite quotes. My kitchen cabinets and windows are close to turquoise so I adjusted the color slightly.
Mary
I live in a small town in the northeast or New England part of the United States. My son and daughter are both in college and we have a mischievous cat named Tangerine who was adopted from the Humane Society animal shelter. My career world has touched many areas including computer science, research, web design, graphic design, administrative, marketing, and volunteering. The best part of all has been the people I’ve met along the way. Enjoy in the doing and be happy in following your own path to express yourself creatively.
My grandfather gave me my first camera when I was 8 years old and I have long enjoyed capturing that special moment on film. I learned to sew on my mother’s old Singer sewing machine at the age of 11. Quilting and sewing have been a passion for many years because of my love for fabric and all things fiber. Watercolor painting and drawing is something that I do when inspiration comes. Recently I have been getting into scrapbooking, book arts, collage, and mixed media. I absolutely love books and read quite a bit and also enjoy trying new things.
Mary
This is my Winter Mystical postcard for Sunday Postcard Art. This angel was a gift from a special friend and she sits on a shelf in my kitchen where I can see her. While finishing up with shoveling snow today the sun came out, so I brought her outside for a quick photo. I printed the photo on 70 pound white paper and used scrapbooking paper, adding watercolor paint on the edge.
Mary
For the new year, scrapbooking designer/author and life artist Ali Edwards asked that people choose and post a word for 2009 on her blog, a single and powerful word to guide them through the coming year. This request resulted in almost 2000 heartfelt and moving posts over a few short days. Ali went through all of the posts and compiled a list of just the individual words and posted them here.
It was a wonderful idea but difficult to choose just one word for 2009. The word I chose was journey, but not in the sense of physical travel. What I mean by journey is to continue on the never ending but enjoyable journey which brings me closer to my real self… inspiring that journey in my just grown children… seeking that journey in my workplace… and finding that journey in my creative and artistic expression. Scrapbooking is a new form of expression for me and it has many elements that appeal to me: photography, preserving memories, telling a story, sharing, creating a book, design, collage, and creativity. My goal in scrapbooking is to focus on a theme in each book… to capture a moment in time, a place, a feeling, relationships, the essence of things. Above is one of the spreads from a 6″x6″ mini book about my home, the place where I live. This is a simple book that went together quickly and easily. Sometimes I overthink things and spend a lot of time trying to decide on what direction to take in my artwork, so it is refreshing for me to get inspired by an idea, shoot some photos, and put something together, all in a short time period. Working in different media and pushing boundaries expands my creativity and keeps things fresh.
Mary
Posted by: Mary @ 9:29 pm
Sometimes, maybe often, less is more. I ended up creating 3 different postcards for the Sunday Postcard Art Celebrate theme to get to the end result. The first one was abstract and while interesting, did not really express the feeling that celebrate brings to mind. The second one had vintage buttons,beads and paint spatters with a hint of fireworks framing the edge, but that still did not say what I was thinking. Finally I remembered a photo taken over the holidays that had that special feeling. I printed the photo on 60 pound smooth white paper obtained from my local printer and carefully cut around the two figures, placing them on a background of fireworks scrapbook paper over a cardstock base. It seems so simple in retrospect, but it was quite a roundabout road to get there… Mary
Collage does not require a lot of materials to get started (basically glue, paper, found objects, and scissors) and there are a lot of things that you can do with collage. The book Collage Unleashed by Traci Bautista is truly inspirational and a great jumping off point into your own explorations. There are links to web sites/blogs for other collage artists on Traci’s creativityUNLEASHED blog.
This is a collage I made a couple of days ago to add to my shell cover ring book. I used card stock, scrapbook paper, handmade rice paper, glue stick, a paper punch, scissors, a rotary cutter, and a brayer. Here is the shell book. It is 6 inches square and I am using it for journaling, drawing, collage, and other creative work. There are instructions on how to construct your own ring book on Mary Art:: These books are a lot of fun to make and they can be used for just about anything.
Mary