The Postcards Are Here

 This was the first card I got.  Its from Jenny in Washington. She blogs at Bird in the Hand  Since I love birds so much I really liked receiving this one.

This one is from Kylene in Pennsylvania.  She blogs at Kylene Lynn Photography Its a great message.

This is from Sarah in California, she blogs at Juicy-S. The heart encloses other hearts, a bird and some leaves.  Its a pretty neat card and technique.  I really love it.

This mosaic came all the way from Australia. Genki blogs here. She tore all those little pieces of paper and then made all her cards this way.  Just fascinating.

This one comes from Samantha in Massachusetts. I don't have a blog address for her.

This lovely rabbit hopped to my house from Norway. I just love her. The lovely Laila blogs at In Laila's Corner

This snowflake is from Eva is Sweden. I have no blog address for her.

This one is from  Kim who blogs at Jumbled Hutch and yes she is from Wisconsin where I once lived. The papers on this one are lovely.

This came from Jeanne is Surrey, England. She is actually a blogger that I follow. You can see her blog right here

This is my bonus card sent to me by my friend Kim since she made extra's. How lucky can I be, I just love the colors on this.

I loved all the cards I got. This is a fun swap but unfortunately I only heard from a couple people on where my cards ended up. I put my email address on all the cards but that doesn't guarantee people will respond. I hope whoever got them did appreciate them. This is my second year doing the swap and I would do it again it really is fun receiving cards from all over and meeting new people and their blogs.

Postcards for iHanna's Swap

These are the postcards I made for iHanna's international postcard swap. You can find out about the swap on her site.  

All the backgrounds were made with Tim Holtz Adirondak Color Wash sprays.  These sprays are actually a water based dye and are fun to work with.  On thiscard I just added some bird stickers.

On this one I started with the face stamp, drew the body and added chalk on the cheeks and the shirt.

Here I used one of the collage elements I got from Zorana, her birds are always a great embellishment.

This one has stamping in white and black and was in homage to the Japanese people.

After creating the background. I used a stencil and  some colorwash spray.  I then outlined the  flowers in white. I loved how it just made them pop.

Here I used my mendhi stencil and some golden fluid paint. I use a stencil brush to get the paint into all those tiny spaces.

In this one I used a stencil and used some colorwash spray.  I then painted over the flowers with twinkling H2o's and then outlined the  flowers in white. You can't see it very well in the photo but the flowers have a shimmery look to them.

I just added  a picture of the Mona Lisa, that was an actual post card itself and then added some charcoal  and oil pastel, and words.  It was fun making these cards.  

So what did you do over the weekend?

The Winners Are....

The winner of Pam Carriker's  book Art at the Speed of Life is Sophie. Sophie I have your address so I'll be sending the book out as soon as I can get it packaged up.

The winner of the spot in my class Mixed Media 101 is Lisa. Lisa I will be sending you class information shortly. Winners were picked by random number generator.   Thanks to all of you who participated. Now back to the regularly scheduled blog.

I made this page yesterday. First I tried out the dauber caps that I had recently bought on some folk art paints to make the ATC. Just a little stamping on top and I was done.  I had picked up a scrapbook paper pad on the Far East just the other day and used one of the papers from it. I stamped bamboo and asian coins on top and added some Japanese fabric tape on the edge. After adding a little journaling I call it done.

I did some playing yesterday. I was trying the technique  I talked about in a this post. I tried it on 3 papers and it never turned out exactly as I planned. I still got interesting papers.  I am using the Colorwash Sprays and not the inks she used in the video. That may be part of the problem, I will probably play some more with the technique cause I think its so cool.

I cut my papers into post card sizes.  I think they will make great backgrounds. I am doing the postcard swap with iHanna again this year.    It is pretty cool to receive arty post cards from all over the world. You make 10 of them which may sound like a lot but once you get started they are so much fun you won't want to stop. These are the postcards I got last year, and the ones I made. You can find out more and sign up here .