Birthday Birds

September's theme for my Arts in the Cards ATC exchange group was pear. We have been working with only color prompts in 2012, and some of them, like rain and dew, have been rather abstract. Even pear can be many shades--red, golden, yellow, or green. It was tempting to do some pieces with little paintings of pears, but I stopped myself from being too literal and just went with pear as a color. These ATCs started with a discarded painting. About a year ago I made some “Balancing My Chakras in a Hurricane” ATCs. http://lindaedkinswyatt.blogspot.com/2011/08/balancing-my-chakras-in-hurricane.html On hurricane day, I also made another painting—of sort of undulating rainbow colors—but I didn’t really like it, and stuck it in a pile in my studio. One recent Sunday afternoon, I pulled it out thinking I could paint on the other side of the paper. With the pear color theme in mind, I decided to try out some new stamps using yellow printmaking ink. I tested a fleur de lis pattern on top of the rainbow watercolor: somewhat of an improvement, but not really special, but I went ahead and printed the yellow fleur de lis all over it since I had already squeezed out the paint and it wouldn’t go back in the tube. After the yellow stamp dried, I tried out (with black ink) another new stamp on top of it—a little bird with a party crown, the words Post Card, a 1909 postal cancellation and some antique looking penmanship. Somehow the crazy black stamp popped the watercolor and gave a very nice effect, enhancing the warm yellow/orange ripe pear colors. I also tried a few with a butterfly stamp, but since I recently made two different butterfly ATCs, I vetoed that idea. I have a September birthday, so a bird in a party crown seemed appropriate for this month, and made my inner child happy.