Wednesday 17 September 2008

Losing the muse over an amusing card

Seem to be having a difficult time, creatively speaking....

The latest theme for this month's NI lottery challenge was to "Make Me Laugh". Now most of my ATC's seem to include an element of humour without my being too conscious of the fact while I am making/creating the card, but setting out to make a humerous card had me stymied.

Well after lots of soul-searching I reckon that I have been thinking too much about the titles (trying to inject some humour?) and not enough about the visual elements in the collage. I certainly would normally almost have completed a card before deciding on a title. BUT because I am a sucker for punishment (and I did call this blog The trials and tribulations of........) I am going to post the inital results here. Three atc's with which I am not very pleased.

firstly, NO ANNIE (or I said under your thumb not gun)
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next CUPBOARD LOVE (or all the nice girls love a sailor)
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and finally HOME ( or I'll just pop inside and slip into something more comfortable)
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Three very simple and straightforward collages. What's even worse is that I have used some great backgrounds and I don't like to use the same elements too many times.


Before the winner (of the lottery was drawn) I came across a picture of a sumo wrestler quite serrendipitously, in a magazine and it gave me an idea. Of course now I wasn't thinking of the issue and was fairly relaxed. The picture was too big for an ATC but I decided the humour could be increased by cutting the image in two. I only needed a couple of bits of text and a set of four corner stamps that I happened to have and bingo!

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Sorry the two photos don't quite match up! I hope Margaret, the winner, likes this diptych. And I think I have learned quite a valuable lesson from all this. If it's visual art............ concentrate on the visual aspects before all else. And relax and enjoy yourself when working.
As an after thought, here is a link to a set of meditation exercises which you may find interesting. If you have never tried it, give it a go.

2 comments:

nancy said...

John,
I'm lovin' the backgrounds here. I was looking on your photostream, too, just to see what you've been doing. You had a transfer image there that looked nice.
Wanted to tell you that I have been doing some transfers using inkjet copies on Tracing Paper. with a thin layer of gel medium on the cardstock, very smooth, I flop the photocopy face down. I've been using a brayer and fingertips to burnish and smooth the paper. The tracing paper dries quickly, but I've even used the heat gun to make sure. The tracing paper is thin and crisp and with just a little bit of water, I can sometimes peel off a large piece in one pull. If I roll it off, after the initial wetting, it seems to roll off when perfectly dry, as well. I'm just really happy with the results and thought you might like to try it. Tracing paper is so easy to come by, unlike some of the fancy and expensive things I'm hearing about.
Nancy

My name is Cindy said...

Oh dear, and I thought this would be such an easy topic for everyone!! But you came up trumps in the end John, they are all great ATCS.