March 26, 2008

procrastination is the answer...

You know how they say "Necessity is the mother of invention?" Well, I think it's procrastination. I am a terrible procrastinator, always have been... I think it forces me to be creative, though. Tonight, I made ATCs for a swap I have known about for at least a month... I could have made them anytime- the theme was an easy one, I thought: cancelled postage stamps- but I just couldn't come up with any ideas I liked! Now that the due date is finally here, I was forced to do something, which led me to a mad dash around the house and thru my craft room, this evening after work. Hopefully I'm not the only one who sometimes needs this creative "mad dash sprint" to the finish line?? Anyway, these are what I came up with: These first two are not my usual style, at all... The bottom one is a crazy sort of garden, with the postage stamps as flowers... the bumblebee is stamped, and colored with marker, while the leaves and grass are hand-drawn with colored pencils. I like the top one a lot: there's a bit of a glare, but the postage stamp is Cinco de Mayo, so I put together a fiesta-themed card. I found the magazine images a few days ago in a back issue of Phoenix Home & Garden, and put the whole thing together in about 15 minutes. (that was after I searched frantically for the magazine, having mis-placed it, of course... that sort of thing always happens when I'm looking for something specific!) These two were also put together rather quickly. The card on the left is a postage stamp of a lighthouse on DiamondHead in Hawaii, so I made a beach from sandpaper, and a palm tree from torn mulberry paper. I really like the graphic design on the stamp on the right ... I simply found matching cardstock and wove strips together to play up the quilt pattern. (I say simply, although it required some glue and finesse to get it put together...) These are a few more of my latest creations, made last week... I'm also coming down to the wire for an "inchie" swap, which is 1-inch square pieces of artwork. These were also really difficult for me to come up with, even though the artwork can be any theme- you'd think this would make it easier for me, but not really. I decided to go with "abstract" for the style... these were made using a scrap paper towel, actually- I was drying my paintbrush out after rinsing it, and still had paint in it- I thought it looked kind of neat, so just continued painting the paper towel with more colors of paint and water... after mounting the towel to watercolor paper squares and trimming them, I added details with metallic pens, sequins and glitter glue. I have two more sets completed, but still need to make 6 more- the mad dash with those will be tomorrow afternoon's project!

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