The Magic Garden - artist trading cards

Still managing to fit in some trading cards to a very busy and full life. the latest pair from this challenge on PDA are shown in this post. I am still making simple collaged cards but then that is the technique which turned me onto trading cards in the first place. My more daring and experimental art work is happening in my painting at the moment.

Things happening in my life at home mean that all my craft "stash" is boxed and put safely away so that I can't get at it easily. Everything for painting is held in one bag. On a Tuesday night, I pick up the bag and head for my art group. I do then have at least a couple of hours once a week to "do my own thing" without worrying about interruption.

But I digress, here are the promised ATC's. Interestingly, I don't often use die-cuts shapes but they seemed to fit on this card. I did draw and shade the fence myself before cutting it out.

And here is a simple collaged card, lots of background elements, including the die cut paper in the lower left corner. The darker blue background is showing thru'. The red hearts are also die-cuts.

One of these days I willl get my studio/office back and begin paying with different techniques. In fact I am tempted to set a series of challenges on PDA to make sure that I do get down to it. I wonder how it would go down?

Back again with more ATC's

I have been away from this blog for a long time. And in that period I have not been too busy with collage or mixed media art. I have been marking time with the one challenge swap which I run on PDA for Kim Newberg. For this challenge I usually create two cards - not sure why, but it has become traditional - so there it is.

I last published any craft work last February and this means I have between 10 and 12 ATC's which I have not posted on the blog. I will have to catch up slowly. For a number of reasons I am finding that collage is taking a back seat at the moment. I am doing more painting, see Painting with John and learning to play the ukelele, results on You Tube via Guitar Bashin'.

I have also been busy writing poetry, if you are still with me then try Poems and Poetry on Life on which I publish my poems and try to explain away the reasons for their concepetion.

Last of all, I have really developed a fondness for photography and the manipulation of the photographs, I have a great deal of fun with this (Photography for Fun) and so you can probably begin to understand why I find time a very difficult problem when I have to divide my FREE time between these interests. Oh yes, I also love to read and get through a number of novels every month.

But those ATC's, what have I been doing? Here is a quick attempt to catch up with challenges from March and April.

Two matching "Irish ATC's" on the theme of Spring

The next theme was to use the alphabet or text,. this produced the following two cards

Duriing this period I have been almost exclusivly using collage with perhaps a little more than paper on occasion for a little change, but only a little. I need to start creating some more cards with the array of techniques that I used for challenges when I was actively trading in groups and creating several every week. I look forward to having mmore free time and getting back to playing around with these techniques. Maybe I should set a them based on some of these techniques rather than subjects. I will think about it.

OK that's all for this post. I hope i will be posting regularly again and keeping you abreast of my crafting/art. I will also be finding more to say than just presenting my newest works.