Round 8

Brenda, Becky, and I are in the last week of round 8 of our 4 x 6 art card exchange....so today I'm celebrating the cards I've gotten from them in the past few weeks.

Becky is known for her doodling....and I can still picture the ones she used to do when we were growing up.  

She called this card "2020 COVID doodles."

So many details...and until I looked closely I didn't realize she doodled on gridded paper. Everytime I look...I see something different.

Both Brenda and Becky are starting to experiment with gelli plate printing...and this is one of Brenda's creations.  She used a mix of Payne's Gray, Ultramarine Blue and Interference Gold. I think it looks like a faraway galaxy....or the inside of a computer chip....or a brain cell.

You never know what you're going to get until you pull the print off the plate.

All the little bubbles, speckles, and textures on this one are so wonderful.  

The three of us have been talking about gelli printing lately...and after the move we're hoping to do some live sharing on Zoom.  And given that...I decided to use some of my printed papers for my cards for round 8.  It was good for me to pause and do a little art in these busy last few weeks.....actually it's good for me even when I'm not busy.

I used a leaf print for the focal point of Becky's card...and variety of other printed papers for the collage.  The gold leaves are cut from commercial paper that I love....it might be from Paper Source.

I used papers from an old road atlas for the background of Brenda's card and torn strips in citrus colors for the focal point.  I told Brenda I wanted a do over on this one.....but there are those leaves again which helped to save it. 

And I don't know what's up with Baltimore....it just suddenly became a feature.

The pages in this road atlas are thin and easy to collage....and the colors were perfect for my pallett. My pencil guideline is just a little bigger than I needed...and made it so much easier to put it together.  At this point it wasn't as clear that Baltimore was going to be such a star.  It's where Paul's sister got her PhD at Johns Hopkins....so we'll say it's a nod to Alyson.

And here's the paper.  What I love about this paper is that you can paint it any color and the gold acts as a resist.  There's a multitude of uses for it.

Here's a piece cut from the same paper I painted a dark blue.

Although I also used painted papers....I took a different approach for the card I'm keeping this week.  I'll share more about that tomorrow....this post is getting too long.