The Milwaukee ATC group's June theme is "For the Birds," which solidly trounced "Favorite Artists," the theme I voted for, so I combined the two and made these Artist Trading Cards inspired by
Joseph Cornell's Aviary series. The parrots in the first ATC above are the same ones Cornell used in
The Caliph of Bagdad and
Untitled (Parrot and Butterfly Habitat). You can see these and other Cornell parrot boxes grouped together in this great
post at the Kiwi's Angels parrot blog.
For my ATCs I started out with
Patti's Parrots Faux Postage from Ten Two Studios and some vintage text glued to some serendipity collage backgrounds. Then I gessoed around the parrots to blend everything together and create the weathered white painted surface that Cornell had in his Aviary boxes. Then I added punchinella (sequin waste) to suggest bits of cage wire. The round things are the plastic labels removed from tabulating machines (a craft supply shared with our ATC group by one of our many generous members), and I also had some old air mail stickers.
To suggest a three-dimensional shadow box, I painted 19th-century newspaper text to look like wood and cut it into strips to outline the card. Then I added shadows around the corners of the box and behind the "props" with a wash of acrylic paints. Definitely need to make some more of these! :D
2 comments:
Carolyn, I know I already stalked these on Flickr but I have to comment again - these are just AWESOME!! I absoulutely love every one of them, and I hope I get lucky enough to snag one! :D Way to go!
Thanks, Mel - if I get my act together this weekend, I want to do another set inspired by his habitat series, which I hope will mean enough cards to go around!
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