The rest of my heart postcards

Ahh yes, these are my last seven out of ten postcards, if you include the post below. I wasn't able to upload all seven photos in one post, so this is a "split post", so to speak. I've had hearts on my mind and brain for well over a month now, while making all these postcards. It was a fun swap and I love the heart theme. However, at this point I'm glad all my postcards are made and in the mail.

I won't go into detail on how I made these, for fairly obvious reasons. Suffice it to say I used a fabric background on all of them, which was my goal. On some the fabric is glued to frozen pizza cardboard (FPC), on the others I used the Mod Podge technic (explained in a previous post). They are all different, which was my plan.

Soon I'll be starting another collaborative effort with another online artist. Something I look forward to. And also working on my own fabric book, the first time ever. That is if I can get over my fear and intimidation of my new electronic Brother sewing machine. I totally love it, but am not familiar or comfortable with it yet.

The rest of my heart postcards

Read above post about these postcards.

A dream come true....and my 100th blog post!

 

Yes indeed, this is my 100th blog post. When I started this blog on February 10th of 2008, I never envisioned making my 100th post. At that time, as a newbie blogger, I was concerned about making my first few posts, and doing it right. And here it is, 14 months later, and I'm up to posting for the 100th time. So for me, this is kind of a milestone of sorts, and one I'm happy to celebrate.

But even better yet, I have some very exciting news to post about on this special 100th post. I'm marveling at the "timing" of this, and thinking perhaps it was meant to be. My exciting news is that my art work has been published! Yes, a dream and goal of mine has come true. And I'm thrilled about it, even bouncing off the walls.  The new book in which my work is published is Collaborative Art Journals and Shared Visions in Mixed Media by L.K. Ludwig. It's supposed to be available in June, but can be pre-ordered on Amazon here: http://www.amazon.com/reader/1592535208?%5Fencoding=UTF8&ref%5F=sib%5Fdp%5Fpop%5Fidx&page=139#reader-link.

This is the first and only time I've submitted my art for publishing. It came about this way. Over a year ago, I joined a very cool yahoo art group, one of my favorites, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ExpressionStudio/. I became acquainted with, and friends with, two wonderful artists in that group, Darlene Wilkinson and Gail Pierce. Darlene saw the call for art for this book, and invited Gail and myself to participate in a collaborative effort to make a book for submission. She chose the theme for the book as "Circles". Gail and I enthusiastically accepted her invitation, and got busy making eight pages each on manilla folders, and sent them to Darlene, who made her eight pages and then compiled our book and sent it in. We heard back that our book was being considered for being included in L.K. Ludwig's book, and of course we were thrilled. Then for the next year, we didn't hear another thing about it, or receive any communication. 

So we've been in the dark about this for over a year, and didn't know until a few days ago when her book was coming out or that our Circles book was included. But now we know, and we're all so excited about it. We are each supposed to receive a complimentary copy of the book, but we don't know when it will arrive. I'm chomping at the bit to get mine, because I don't know which pages of our book were published. And beyond that, I'd love to see and read her book.

So, that's the story on this "adventure", this dream come true for me. When we submitted this book, I was so, so hoping it would be accepted for publishing. And yet, I was wary of having too high expectations, and then possibly being disappointed. I tried not to put too much importance on this, or obsess about it. So yes, it was a dream and goal, but one I tried to keep in perspective. And it's so wonderful to end up achieving this goal, rather than end up disappointed. 

I want to give a lot of credit and thanks to my friend Darlene, who initiated this whole idea and our book. Because without her, and if she hadn't so kindly invited me to take part in this....well, this never would've happened for me. Thank you so much Darlene! This book was my first collaborative effort, and it encouraged me to persue other collab efforts with other artists, although those weren't for the purpose of submission for publishing. 

The five photos in my last post and the three in this post are of my eight pages in our collaborative Circle book. I've wanted to post these on my blog for over a year, but wasn't able to do that due to the rules of submitting for publication. Now, I can finally post these, which makes me happy. I'm a very happy lady today, for a number of reasons. Today is a good day for me.

My pages in a collaborative Circle book

Read the next post about this Circle Book.

Ahhh yes, another fabric heart postcard

Well, I'm involved in a heart postcard swap in a favorite yahoo group right now, and I have to make nine of them. So far I have five done, and four to go. Obviously I have hearts on the brain while I'm making these, and will be posting all or some of them on my blog. All the ones I've made so far are different, but I'm a bit worried about running out of original ideas for all nine of them. We'll see if my muse, Bonita, comes through for me, or if I end up duplicating some of them. The heart theme is right up my alley, because I love using hearts in my art, and have done it fairly often.

I used yellow fabric for the base of this piece, and frayed the edges. I often do that when I use fabric in my art. (I used the Mod Podge on plastic technic that I explained in my post of March 11th, so scroll down to read about that technic). Then I stamped with lavender and green acrylic paints, using my new harlequin stamp and a bottle lid for the green circles. Then I glued down the threads from fraying for great texture.

The cute bird is stamped onto a distressed paint chip (I've explained the distressed paint chip technic in a number of previous posts), and for the heart I glued lace fabric cut from a blouse onto paint chip, then painted it yellow, then rubbed over it with lavender paint. I also glued down a small skeleton leaf, and five seeds that I painted with my very cool three tip paint brush. I also used that brush on the edges for the lavender lines.

I'm proud of myself that I actually used some stamps on this piece. As I've said before, I have sooo many cool stamps and yet so seldom use them in my art. I'm not sure why that is, but it bothers me. Especially when I have so many great stamps, most of which I've never used even once. How sad/crazy is that??? And yet, I keep buying stamps, which makes it even crazier. In fact, I have to fess up that I bought some new stamp sets from Addicted to Rubber Stamps just a week ago, when they had their 31% off sale. They haven't arrived yet. I saved money on the sale, but the shipping cost was a big "ouch"! Due to the high shipping cost, a whopping $8.37, which totally made me wince, I only ended up saving a few dollars on the whole deal. I just can't believe the shipping was so high, when I know the unmounted stamps don't weigh that much.

I rarely buy things online for that very reason -- the outrageous shipping costs! But these are stamp sets I haven't seen at Hobby Lobby or Joann's, so I could only get them online. And now, I'm wondering (and fearing) how long it will take me to actually use them in my art. So anyway, I'm trying to make myself use my stamps more in my art. At least that's a goal of mine.