When I’m not miniaturising, doll making, gardening or online shopping (which you should not do late at night, when tired with a credit card), (as my grandmother used to say: Don’t do what I do, do what I tell you) I make cards.
I send them to a number of friends, for many reasons. Number one is that a handmade card is love in paper. It really shows that someone cares. It is not a problem for the recipient to deal with, once you have enjoyed it you just stick it in the paper recycling. This is such a benefit. For some reason people keep giving the OH and I candles. I have no idea what to do with all the candles. We have electricity and live in a house with combustible artefacts, why would I use a candle? And, as for the scented ones – sickbag.
Also, the enjoyment of making the card means that I benefit from a nice pastime, though, to be fair, what I need is more time, not ways to pass it. If it goes wrong, you can recycle it, it’s a piece of paper. I enjoy watching craft TV and online demonstrations of techniques. I like purchasing inexpensive bits to make things and I have loved visiting craft shops since the mid nineteen fifties.
Altogether nice and, if you practise, you can get quite good at it. A card is a modest piece of art that doesn’t demand a wall, or much of an audience.
Recently I discovered the Craft Consortium Essential 12inch paper pads. These are marbly paper in numerous arty colours that make a good foundation for any sort of pictorial effort. I’m buying mine at www.createandcraft.com and you can buy direct from www.craftconsortium.com and various other places near you. They also do paper kits with images and embellishments to match.
I began by using the papers with Tim Holtz landscape dies, they make lovely mountains.
Here the papers are everything: the mountains, the fields, the deer and the tree. The sun is a stencil and I have added shadows to the deer to make them solid. The deer are Tim Holtz dies too.
I used them as background to these vellum flowers, which are from Memory Box dies. When the Tim Holtz texture fades acorn embossing folder arrived in the post I did these, to start with.
In reality they look a little like an old tapestry. Tim Holtz is so clever, he has such an interesting way of thinking, you can find him online and get endless inspiration.
I have five paper pads to get through, each one has 30 double sided sheets, so that’s how many ideas I have, at least.
It’s one thing to make items yourself, I’ve been doing that all my life, but to make items that inspire art in other people is quite something. I enjoy so much using lovely bits of paper to send ephemeral joy through the post.
Pictures made in this way can say more than words, to the people who most need to hear them.
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