Manzanita ATC Series - final

Manzanita No. 5

Manzanita No. 6

Manzanita No. 7

These are the final three of seven ATCs made in the Manzanita series.   I shared them with my art buddy Michele yesterday and her comment was it is obvious that I had a good time doing them. Yes, I did!  So thank you Gina May for your inspiration.

My next series is postcards.  I found the absolutely best cocktail napkin that spawned inspiration.  So you will see those cards next.  Gosh!  Tomorrow is October 1.  Yikes!  Fall is definitely here!

Manzanita Series Continues

Manzanita No. 3

Manzanita No. 4

One might think it is rather easy to create an ATC quickly.  Not so!  I spend a great deal of time trying out pieces for the card.  First you have to find a bunch and I mean a bunch of ephemera.  Since I was at the beach I poured over brochures and coastal magazines in order to have beach images. Then since I had purchased matchbooks, I had to figure out how all this was to going to work together.  Of course, you have to decide for yourself if I was successful or not.  All I have to say is that it was fun!  I do like having a limited amount of medium as well.  That makes the job a bit less demanding.  When I am home I am surrounded by all those art supplies I just had to try out. :-)  You know what I mean!

Manzanita ATCs 2014 - series

Manzanita ATC No. 1

Manzanita ATC No. 2

Tim and I spent a week in Manzanita, Oregon on R and R after two months of getting my mother's house ready to sell.  So I decided to take only Pitt pens, a bit of ephemera, and a glue stick on this trip. My inspiration was from my friend Gina May who created ATCs on one of her trips in the last few years. The task was to use what you could find in any one day.

So I used brochures and business cards that I found .  I used matchbook covers that I scored from an antique store in Wheeler, and I used the ephemera that I brought along to make one ATC per day. This series I am calling Manzanita.  I will show you all seven in the next few days.

Chicks

Chicks

So is the word "chicks" offensive to women?  Do a search on the internet and see what others have said.  It is funny how a word has power if you let it.  Personally I can't think of a time I used the word "chick" other than perhaps to refer to a film, "chick flick".  When you do a search it is amazing how many terms are out there for people in general....cougar, fag hag, queen, guys (used for both male and female, etc.

So why did I create an ATC with this particular theme?  Who knows where my ideas come from??  They just come.  In this case I had the chicken, or is that a rooster?, already glued to an ATC and decided that when the women fell on it that this was the way this card was to go.  This happens to me all the time...no planning....no preconceived idea on what or how something will turn out.  Just "happy accidents".

Ukiyo-e #16

Ukiyo-e #16

Today I was lucky enough to spend some time in a second/third grade classroom doing art.  What fun to see children expressing themselves with all the freedom of the world!  One boy came up to me and was so thrilled with his work that he commented that he was going to invent a new style of painting. I said, "Go for it!"  Move over Picasso and all!

Ukiyo-e #16 is yet another postcard using up what is around.  I found an old insect textbook recently while cleaning up my mother's house. As you know I love black and white photos on a colored background. The number in the corner is Japanese for 16.....ten plus six.

Ukiyo-e #10

Ukiyo-e # 10

OMG!  It has been almost a month since I last posted on this blog.  Perhaps you thought I had fallen off the face of the earth. Not the case!  I have been busy getting my mother's house ready to sell. What a task that has been!  I have been painting, cleaning, discarding, holding an estate sale, and taking care of business affairs.  It all takes time but I have accomplished a lot in three months.  The last month has been the most hectic.

If you are curious about the house, here is the MLS for it.... http://www.matrix.nwmls.com/DE.asp?ID=12254528907

Yesterday was the first day I have been able to do any art other than teaching it.  I found a calendar at a garage sale this summer with Ukiyo-e prints on it.  I snatched it up for a dollar.  So now I am using this ephemera in a postcard series.    Ukiyo-e #10 is totally recycled materials I had around the studio. The background is "waste" paint on deli paper.  The red cross in the lower right is the number ten in Japanese.