Song Lyric ATCs

I'm not sure how January zipped by so quickly! Here are some Artist Trading Cards that I made for the Milwaukee ATC group's January theme "Song Lyrics."

For some, the backgrounds were "serendipity collage" made with torn vintage song sheets, colorful origami and scrapbook paper glued randomly to a background card and stenciled & stamped with chalk inks. Others used the ATC-sized "Grungy Bingo Cards" from Ten Two Studios. The vintage photos are from the new Homespun Hearts collage sheet. They all have such solemn expressions, don't they? :D



You can see all the Song Lyric ATCs that I made here.

Starting a 365 Project (AGAIN)

Back in 2006-2007 I made an ATC a day for 365 days, and that was a very satisfying exercise. But when I tried to follow it up with Crafting 365 on Flickr, I got bogged down not with trying to do a little bit of craft everyday, but with documenting it! I wasn't taking a photo of every little thing I did (5 minutes of sewing, etc), and while I tried writing down my daily accomplishment, I found this tedious (and tended to misplace my notebook). So after failing to follow through on Crafting 365 not once but twice, I let the whole thing lapse.

Flash forward to January 2010, when Rachel.::.K announced a Milwaukee 365 Flickr group. So I thought, what the heck, I can probably manage a photo a day. Some days will be crafty, some days may peek at everyday life. Some days may produce a blurry picture of a cat. We'll see how long I can keep this one up! Here is my 365 Milwaukee 2010 photoset on Flickr.

January 6, 2010 - Contrasting my ATC with the inspiration photo from Mark Simon's Facial Expressions: A Visual Reference for Artists

Share your New Year's Resolutions & maybe win something!

Lisa Vollrath's doing her New Year's Resolution giveaway at Ten Two Studios. Share your creative resolutions there, and you'll be entered in a drawing for a 6-month subscription to her e-zine, The Monthly Muse. I get this for free as a member of the Ten Two Studios design team, but even if I didn't, I would subscribe since it's such a good value, and I learn something new in every issue. (And you can't always say that about the more expensive print magazines!)

Though I'm exempt from the drawing, I did have to leave a comment about my lack of New Year's Resolutions (as noted in my previous blog post). I spent New Year's Day in my PJs experimenting with the techniques I had learned in Laurie Mika's workshop, making New Year's ornaments to go out with my friends' winter holiday packages (They would die of shock if they got something from me before Christmas).

I experimented with image transfers using Translucent Liquid Sculpey and images from the Ten Two Studios Little collage sheets, which took me a few tries to determine the correct baking time for my toaster oven. Here are the experiments peeled at different times & thicknesses of clay, showing how NOT to do it.

Two more days to goof off, and then back to work on Monday!

New Year's Resolutions, or lack thereof

My mom asked me what my New Year's resolutions were for 2010, and I surprised myself by echoing my husband's sentiments: "I'm not making any resolutions." Every year I have some vague idea that THIS is the year when I will organize my office & art space and make art to sell and so forth and so on. Well (as my hubby will tell ya), my work areas are still a mess, and while I did sell some art and teach workshops this year, it wasn't through any concerted effort on my part. So this year, I figure I'll try to do my best, and we'll see what comes of it!

My book arts group is doing a monthly mail art swap where we each send someone else in the group a piece of mail art each month. Above is the postcard I made for my friend Darlene, who is also a cat lover.

So Happy New Year, and let's all just try to do the best that we can in 2010!