Birthday Cards for Mom

20140316-154251.jpgFor my mom’s birthday this year, I decided to make her a set of note cards. I knew she liked cherry blossoms, and I found this gorgeous handmade paper that was full of them! I used two different colors of paper, originally thinking I would use them both on one card, but it turned out they looked better by themselves – less crowded. And I decided to use two colors of cards, just for variety and because I thought they looked beautiful together as a set.

20140316-155026.jpgI also used some of the paper to decorate the envelopes, because I’ve had note cards before that have that detail, and I think it really adds.

20140316-154700.jpgThe cards got more ridiculous as I went. First I was just letting the flowers leak onto the back

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20140316-154850.jpg She liked them, so that’s good!!

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Light and Shadow

20140309-133307.jpg This one was new for me, for a number of reasons. One being the treatment of positive and negative space: instead of Person being positive and everything else being negative, this was light and shadow. It meant dealing more with features and details than I’m used to, and I ended up with two complete images, which furthers the whole positive/negative space thing.

Also, I have got to resist the urge to work so small!! These images are ~4×6, which meant that some of the pieces were the size of dust (literally: at one point I thought a piece of dust was one of my pieces) – ridiculous.

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Secret Valentine’s Day

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I organized a Secret Valentine exchange for my work and we were only allowed to spend $5, and homemade gifts are always appreciated, so I decided to make the card (I also got my valentine a small plant). I made a heart out of like 20 different papers and then collaged them together on the front of a blank card. Happy almost Valentine’s Day!

Models

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Also while I was bored at home recovering, I made some portraits of models from magazine ads. 

The gold hair girl is my favorite – crazy hair is always the most fun to make. 

20140126-154714.jpgThe one of the green girl I donated to my friend’s Marathon fundraiser and apparently it became a new New Yorker’s first piece of art for her new apartment!

20140126-154722.jpg(Gold Hair and Blue Mom are available if you’re interested)

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Girl with a Gun

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A friend told me he liked my art, but that he thought it would really only appeal to chicks (which wasn’t the first time I’d heard that).  He said if I wanted to make something for dudes it would have to be a girl holding a gun or something.  Done.

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Thank You Cards

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With all my time staying home recovering from surgery and unable to do much, I decided to make thank you cards for all my amazing friends who took care of me and kept me company.  These are all cutouts from scrapbooking paper.

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These ones were cutouts of images from the different papers

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These were all doodles of mine that I traced and cut out

20131230-220738.jpgThis one was taken from magazine picture, I think it was a nail polish ad or something

Dear Surgeon

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I tore my ACL playing soccer and was a little terrified about surgery.  I decided to make a card for my surgeon with a guilt-trippy message about “thank you in advance for making me able to run again” and “I’m so grateful to be in the hands of such a respected surgeon” or whatever, and I put an image of a girl running on the front.  The hardest part of this was making so small an image, but it worked out. And he did a good job!

Self Portrait 2

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A boyfriend at the time took a picture of me that he really liked, but I did not at all. So to get rid of it I made it into this portrait, which I do like.

Cellist for Grandma

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My grandmother was a wonderful cellist, and she loved everything music related, so for her 80th birthday I made her a cellist portrait. I used glossy paper to make up the instrument itself in order to make it pop a little bit.

Fundraiser for Haiti

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After the earthquake in Haiti in 2010, a coworker held an art auction as a benefit and I donated two pieces. My coworker gave me some images from Haiti that I could use. The first is a woman praying – this piece was important for me obviously because of the cause, but also because I hadn’t really thought about framing or negative space before. The second is children on their way to school. This was important because I hadn’t done much with multiple people, and especially with such small people. This was also a diversion from what had really only been pictures of women before. (Please excuse my reflection in the photos!!)

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