NYC Subway Map ATC

Maps were the theme for the December 2013 heARTist group ATC trade. After researching  antique maps of all sorts, I still felt uninspired. Then, a little voice (voices of teachers past) said "Do what you know." With that advice ringing in my head, I settled on the New York City subway map, and centered on the routes I take on a daily basis. I zeroed in on the east side of Manhattan, where I live, and included the tiny Roosevelt Island, where I work, and Harlem, where I will be working in the near future. (Roosevelt Island is the little pill shaped island between Manhattan and Queens.)

I cut out the map and adhered it to a greenish batik, then added a mini metro card and the vintage subway token that was in use when I moved to New York many years ago. The edges were touched with a gold paint pen, darkened with a liquid chalk stamp pad and the ATC finished with a coat of Modge Podge for shine.

Woodstock Music ATCs

Here is what I have been working on lately for Music ATCs for the heARTist Trading group.  I went back to the Woodstock era for design inspiration and added some lyrics from the famous song, written by Joni Mitchell and made famous by Crosby, Stills and Nash. The designs were done in Photoshop and Quark, then overprinted with white printmaking paint, and the edges aged with liquid brown chalk.

Butterfly ATCs: Lift Your Glistening Wings

The heARTist Trading group’s August 2013 ATC exchange theme is butterflies. What could be more summery and lovely? I have a soft spot in my heart for butterflies—my daughter’s middle name is Kamama, which means butterfly in Cherokee, so butterflies are extra magical for me. I also love the butterfly bush, which smells heavenly and really does attract tons of butterflies.

I made a number of collages in Photoshop, layering the images and using a soft eraser brush set at 50% to give some transparency. I combined various butterflies with flowers, old newsprint, textures and words. Many of the flowers, patterns, and butterflies were from The Graphics Fairy. http://thegraphicsfairy.com/ On several, I inserted (using an assortment of fonts) words from Society’s Child, an old favorite song by Janis Ian:  “…one of these days I’m gonna lift my glistening wings and fly…” On others I used the words kamama, papillion and mariposa, which all mean butterfly.

I had such a good time designing the Photoshop collages that I made about 30 ATC printouts, output on cardstock with a color laser printer. Going back to my tried and true favorite technique, I printed over them using white printmaking paint applied to some of my favorite commercial and hand-carved stamps. The edges got an aged effect by dipping them in distress ink and/or liquid chalk. Pictured are the 11 I liked best…but I can’t pick a favorite, can you?

Vintage Typography

Typography is one of my favorite themes, so I don’t know why it took me weeks to decide on what to do for my heARTist Trading ATCs. There were so many directions within typography that I tried three or four approaches, but nothing was really working. 

My family has been watching the old 1970s PBS show “Upstairs, Downstairs”, so I wanted to do something with the Art Nouveau style. I puttered for hours with Nouveau-inspired fonts and played with letters, words, and fabric designs in Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator without too much success. Next, inspired by the work of artist Lisa Occhipinti, I used portions of the swoop of a Q, Z and M Art Nouveau backgrounds, an antique beach, and my own designs—without success.

So, I went back to my old favorite—vintage advertising, and layered Graphics Fairy http://thegraphicsfairy.com/ and other antique images in Photoshop to create this month’s ATCs. I tried about 50 different ideas, and printed the five styles I liked best. I surrounded a Pears Soap ad with text about cleanliness and beauty in an old west-inspired font. The Monaco-Monte-Carlo card was the only one in an Art Nouveau style; I layered a Mucha poster on one of my own designs. The beehive/rose, bird in an envelope and French advertising all multiple vintage images that were layered and softened in Photoshop.

Romantic Distressed Tags and Zetti ATCs

Tags are so much fun…even though I have almost no art space to work in and most of my supplies are crammed into a tiny closet I couldn’t resist joining the June heARTist Trading group's side trade. I returned to the techniques that I love and find soothing and therapeutic—designing collages in photoshop with vintage images Graphics Fairy images http://thegraphicsfairy.com/  overprinting by stamping with white printmaking paint; and using recycled teabags that have been stamped with white printmaking paint. I added a rusted folk-art heart and subtle lace to the teabag tags, and distressed all the tags with liquid chalk stamp pad to get an aged effect.

Zetti is one of my favorite themes, so I had a lot of fun with this month’s theme. The top one uses a Graphics Fairy vintage angel image. In Photoshop, I layered in a different face, added some Adobe illustrator black and white patterns, a hand that came from a small carved wooden Tibetan stamp and inserted the word “believe.” I finished it with gold acrylic accents. On the left is my alter-ego Esme, who emerged while I was doodling during a lengthy phone call with an old friend of my husbands who claims to have psychic abilities. I was inspired to add the “fish hat” after seeing the work of Deborah Burnahm (Land of Nod Studio). The words “strange things on my mind” seemed particularly appropriate. The ATC on the right is a five year old me, who was very, very shy and dreamed of being an artist. I added the words “trust yourself” because art was a path that was discouraged by my parents, and not encouraged by a teacher until I was a senior in high school. The design was done in Photoshop, and the background color added with water-soluble colored pencils.

 

4” x 4” Mixed Media Digital Collages

 Themes for art trades are a double-edged sword—they can spark creativity or they can squelch it. For me, they are often too narrow and specific and make me feel boxed in. When the idea of doing 4” square art pieces with no theme was posted to heARTist Trading, I felt like I had been released from the box. I toyed with the ideas of needle-felting, “scrappy” fabric, watercolor, collage and even a small paper doll sized to fit a 4” square. At the moment, I have some serious space and time constraints, and my sewing machine is packed up, so I decided to go with my latest loves—layering vintage photos in Photoshop and combining the Photoshop work with stamping, stenciling, chalk, inks and/or colored pencil.Thanks to the abundance of Graphics Fairy free digital vintage images available, I had a great time puttering and tweaking in Photoshop, trying out different layers, brushes and filters. For “Helen” (otherwise known as my mother) I used a pink mum, decoratively scrolled sheet music, an aged promissory note, and a photo booth snapshot of Helen from the 1940s. After laser printing my Photoshop creation on cardstock, I applied an assortment of stamps with white printmaking ink, and then aged it with Ranger Distress ink and spots of chalk for color accent.

The second piece, “Soap,” shows my love of vintage typography and romantic flowers. I layered both sides of an advertising card (one side with a rose and the other with the typography) in Photoshop and laser printed the finished work on cardstock. I was particularly drawn to the advertising card because the soap manufacturer was in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, where, in the 1980s, I spend many hours as a textile print stylist “striking-off” new designs for Leon B. Rosenblatt Textiles.

I used white paint on a variety of stamps—among them two of my favorite: a paisley and a fish—purchased at a Tibetan store in New York’s East Village. After the paint dried, I aged it with a brown liquid chalk ink and Ranger Distress ink. The finishing touch was a strip of my favorite sheer lace from M and J Trim.

Prehistoric Cave Hunters ATC

 

 

Sticks and Stones—that was an interesting prompt for our April heARTist Trading ATC exchange. http://heartisttradingcards.blogspot.com/ I really had to put on my thinking cap. I googled internet images for all kinds of things made of stick or stone, mulling over crystals, all kinds of wooden items and even puttered with photos of the bands Styx and the Rolling Stones.

Then I remembered an old textile design I had painted with gouache on oatmeal paper. It had hunters and cattle, and was done in a style reminiscent of ancient cave drawings. I googled more images and reignited my love of cave paintings, so I decided to use the old design as my starting point.

I covered watercolor paper with recycled tea bags, and then printed ATC sized images from my inkjet printer onto the 8.5x11 paper. The texture was pretty good, but the tea bags absorbed a lot of color making the image less distinct and the color more muted. So, I punched it up by using one of my hand-carved stamps with Tim Holtz distress ink in olive and sepia. Better, but not great.

Next, I pounced gold acrylic onto them randomly with a round, flat top stenciling paintbrush, which helped give it some magic and mystery. It was still a little blah, so I tried adding color with markers, mostly because I was too lazy to pull out my paint! The markers absorbed into the teabag in some places, but not in others. I added some dark brown Portfolio water soluble oil pastels, and then finished the cards with white Portfolio water soluble oil pastel to make the colors pop as well as add depth and contrast. The sides were dipped in gold acrylic paint.

For comparison, here is the fabric I output from my inkjet printer directly onto cotton that shows the color and texture of the original design.

 

Heat-Distressed Recycled Tyvek Inchies

Inchies...I really thought that 1" x 1" would be too small to do anything interesting so I didn't immediately sign up for the exchange in our heARTist trading group http://heartisttradingcards.blogspot.com/. But...I loved the inchies Karen Musgrave and Marie Johansen made and didn't want to miss out on receiving some tiny treasures, so I joined the inchie madness.

I don't usually work huge—I like anything from ATC size to 5"x7" to 24"x24", but really, what could I do on a 1" square? I started by rummaging through my scrap box. The box isn't leftover junk, it has leftover pieces of favorite projects that are too small to use, or unfinished projects that didn't quite come out right but still have interesting elements.

I found a special scrap I had been saving from a project a while back—it was a rectangle of tyvek, made from a recycled USPS mailing envelope. I had painted the inside with an goldish-olive metallic Lumiere paint, splattered it with gold, white, copper and turquoise Lumiere dribbles, then (after it was dry) distressed it quickly with a hot, dry iron. Tyvek, especially the recycled kind, puckers and bubbles and melts unevenly, and you never know what the result will be. (If you try this, please wear a mask and have good ventilation!)

I randomly chopped the piece into 1" squares, then sorted through them to find the most interesting sections. Some I used as they were, and others I hand-stitched together to make them more interesting. I added teeny turquoise seed beads and some tiny chunks of turquoise stone. I backed them with peltex for stability, and instead of using glue, I attached the peltex with tiny criss-cross stitches to add texture. The final touch was adding brown fabric marker at the edges to cover the white peltex that peeked out.

It is interesting that a man-made fiber—tyvek—can have such an organic quality when it is painted and melted. The technique doesn't work as well using ordinary acrylic paint—I have found that only Lumiere gives me the effect I like.

Now I'm ready to do more inchies! They are the perfect way to use up the itty bitty scraps that are too pretty to thow away, but not big enough for any other project.