Year of the Rabbit

Every once in a while, I make something that I love so much, I can't even wait for the glue to dry before I share it.  This is one of those projects - an ATC to celebrate the Asian year of the Rabbit. 

Once I had it in my head that I wanted to do an oriental woman holding a rabbit, I knew that I had no choice but to draw it myself.  I had rabbit stamps and geisha stamps, but none that went together.  By drawing it myself, I guaranteed that they would both have the same style. 

I want to say something to those of you that think you can't draw.  I filled two solid pages of drawings before I did one that I liked enough to scan, and then I did even more to it after I scanned it.  That's how it is with drawing.  You don't just scribble something on a sheet of paper that looks perfect, you have to keep doing it over and over until your hand does what your brain keeps trying to tell it to do. 

There are a gazillion layers on this ATC.  There are two backgrounds, 4 punched circles for the hair, and so many little pieces for the outfit, it's crazy.  

What's even crazier is that I need eight of these for a swap.  Aaack!

Challenges:

Stamp R Us - animals

Be Crafty - new year

Alphabet - L is for Lady

Simply Create - punches

Catasterism

Someone once told me many years ago that when a person or creature is turned into a constellation, the word for it is "catasterism". This is one of those words, like "defenestration", that you wonder why it even needed to be created. I assure you that this is the first time I've needed it in over twenty years.



The cat is mine, the stars are Hubble's. The photos, I mean; the cat and the stars belong to the Lord.

This did not print well at all on my printer at home. I'm thinking about sending it to be professionally printed - I think it makes a fun digital ATC.

Inchie heaven

If my postings last week were a little sparce, it was because I was very busy creating for Digital Two for Tuesday - I got to be Guest Designer this week!



Cora was spot on giving me inchies to make, but even though one inchie doesn't take that long, making over 70 of them takes forever! If you want to see a better picture of my little gems, you'll have to pop over there.

Black Lace

I'm sliding back into the digital gutter. Exhibit A:

The assignment is to make inchies with lace for a mingle (sort of like a swap). There are a lot of ways to go with this idea. I could attach real lace to an inchie, or make paper lace with punches, or even crochet little tiny doilies (yeah, right!) but instead I had to go digital. This isn't even really lace, it is fractal art.



The words were cut out of a book that I got from the dollar store.

So, I had this all this fractal lace that I printed out, used a total of 4 square inchies, and didn't have a plan for the rest of it, when I recalled the Clean and Simple challenge at Gingersnap Creations. Their thesis is that if you take a printed image, cut it into a triptych and tie a ribbon around it, it qualifies as a handcrafted card. Really?



What do you think? Does this count as a "real" card?

Giroids?

My friend Cat, the artist, was trying to draw giraffe androids (don't ask, just play along nicely). She sent the drawings to me, and I had to use one to make a card:



The background papers and embellishments are from the Beach kit by my friend Valerie. The tarnished metal frame qualifies it for the Gingersnap Challenge (I know, I don't normally do metals). The giroids can be downloaded from Cat's blog.

Frog love

YOu may remember that a few days ago, I made a card, then ripped off the focal image and stuck it on a different card. I couldn't just leave an almost finished card alone:



I just happened to have this frog sitting around. He was holding yellow flowers, which I didn't think went well with the pink floral paper, so I tried coloring over them - BAD idea. I ended up cutting them off, which is to say, I found myself cutting the frog away from the flowers and everything else. He seems to be holding his own without them, wouldn't you say? This layout is from the Pink Elephant challenge this week.

Bubble backgrounds ATCs

You may recall I made some backgrounds a few days ago with the Bubble Background technique. I loved how the bubbles turned out so much that I could hardly imagine covering them up with layers and embellishments. I also didn't trust myself to stamp directly on them without ruining them, even if I had a good stamp. I thought it would be fun to use an image of someone or something blowing bubbles.



This is clipart, somewhat modified by me - the original image had bubbles floating over the cat, but since I already had plenty of bubbles in the background, I trimmed those away. That only left the problem of getting the image out of the computer and onto glossy cardstock with ink bubbles on them. Good thing I know how to do packing tape transfers!

Digital Tri Shutter ATC

When I was making the tri shutter card, it occurred to me that I was doing it the hard way – it would be much easier to decorate the pages before I folded them. Taking it to the next logical step, it occurred to me that the tri shutter ATC could be created digitally, 3 to a page, and then all I would need to do is cut them out and fold them.

I just downloaded some beautiful digital papers from The Sum of All Crafts this morning, so I used a piece for the base of my card. The Sum of All Crafts has downloads every day, and a few days ago, some vintage nude bodybuilders were posted to the site. All of Valerie’s subscribers got very excited and wanted to do a swap using these images. I was all for doing a male nude swap too, but I’m not so big a fan of vintage images, so I googled some hotties and worked with those.

You would think that it would be simple to just plaster my digital base with images, but it does take some thought. You have to consider how the card will look closed, as well as open, and you have to make sure the elements don’t crease in the wrong places. I was very concerned that the guys on my card would look like they were playing with each other. That could be interesting in a different way, but it was not the look I was going for.

Anyway, as I was finishing and cutting this ATC, I remembered why I don’t like doing digital ATCs. There really is no point to printing and mailing them. I could just as easily send you the digital file and let you print and cut them out yourself.


So, here is the deal. Here is a digital representation of the card closed. If you want to see the complete tri shutter ATC, you have to email me for the file, print it out yourself, and cut and score it. It is a 7.5” x 3.5” jpg, 200 dpi, and I don’t have the copyright to any of the images (in case you were wondering).