Sallyacious

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December 01, 2006

Dreams of November

Last night, I received two sets of gorgeous ATC's in the mail. For two different swaps. (I feel sort of like I cheated, because both swaps were international, and even though the partners were randomly assigned, my stuff went off to people in California and Pennsylvania and Oregon, and I got ATC's from people in FRANCE and AUSTRALIA. Okay, maybe not cheated. More like, Wow, how incredibly lucky am I?)

One set was for the Coffee swap I posted about already. These were the cards I got from France (Hi Isa!). They are fantastic. Gorgeous. I have not enough adjectives to do them justice. Plus, each card came in its own fabulous personal envelope, which was also based on the coffee theme and was, I assume, handmade.

Even better is the letter included saying she wants to do some trading specifically with me. I am all over that. More incredible art from this woman? Fantastic.

The other set is from Australia, as I mentioned above, and they're also amazing. She tied hers in a ribbon. Like a present. Why do I not think of these things? I was proud of myself for packing the cards I sent off in bubble wrap and little boxes (because they've got 3-D aspects to them). It never occurred to me to make the packaging pretty as well as functional.

The cards from Australia are for a swap called Perchance to Dream, and the theme was any aspect of dreams and dreaming. Everybody had to create six cards to send to two partners. (Three each, in other words. All you copy editors out there can just keep quiet. I struggled with that sentence a long time before I gave up and let it be what it was.)

Getting these cards reminded me that I hadn't posted pix of the cards I did for my Perchance to Dream series, so you'll find them below. I don't know why, but after the Coffee series, I was interested in going even further with the three-dimensional thing, and since ATC's are the perfect opportunity to experiment, I went hog wild. But see for yourself:

Nightmare I

Nightmare II

Yes, I really did use three different sizes of googly eyes for the above two cards. They're a lot of fun to tip and tilt.

Flying Dream

This card includes a blowup of an actual photo I took of a bird flying and several layers of gauze

Dreamscape

This one took forever to make. The base is seashells and beads glued to watercolor paper. The whole thing is decoupaged over with grey and purple paper, though not enough to be completely opaque. Then I poured a layer of glue over it. When that dried (more or less), I glued on real pressed flowers and then coated those with a layer of glue. So shapes are distorted, things seem to be floating, you can see the shapes of things under other stuff, but not enough to really tell what they are. Dream logic, in other words. I can stare at it forever.

(Or at least I could, until I packed it up in a box and shipped it off to Pennsylvania.)

Dreaming of Forgotten Things

I don't know why I felt like harking back to the days of sailing ships. Probably the Romance of the Sea.

Hallucinogenics

For this one, I deliberately cut the paper I used for the background slightly off so that it adds to the freaky dream sense. It makes me think of Alice in Wonderland.

I had so much fun making the above cards. It was great to just let my imagination loose to play. I hope the recipients of my all of my recent ATC's are as thrilled with their new art as I am with what I got in the mail yesterday.

Posted by sally at December 1, 2006 10:58 AM

Comments

Posted by: Batraplume at December 2, 2006 05:25 PM

Posted by: Sallyacious at December 2, 2006 06:56 PM

Posted by: Batraplume at December 3, 2006 11:30 AM

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