The Kindness Of Strangers

A package from Poland, tagged and tied with string! What could it be?

An exciting stash of collage materials with special instructions: select 12 items from the box and replace them with 12 more; write a message in the little booklet enclosed; forward the package on to another artist who's name you've been given (in this instance, it was Rebecca from Barnsley). Finally: make a collage incorporating your chosen items and post on your blog.

Sometime before Christmas, I'd signed-up to take part in one of my friend LaWendula's postal exchanges: this one is named "The Collage Box Project". LaWendula's clever initiatives to bring artist-bloggers together never fail to energize my creativity and I wanted to make something that reflected the spirit of generous exchange and imaginative recycling that they brilliantly embody. So I chose 12 snippets that I thought would make a useful digital collage kit that could be shared with you all and used to create even more artworks. Once I'd scanned my chosen, here's what I did...

I made two textured journal pages. The photo above was taken while I was working. Below is a scan of one side of the double-spread textured pages

While I was preparing the journal page, I also made a separate texture on heavy card

Once scanned, this became the starting point for...

A set of digital papers. It's been so long since I fired-up Photoshop, I wondered if I'd remember how to use it. This was my first time working with with CS5 since I upgraded, which made things even more interesting...

For the paper above, I incorporated German algebraic text: scanned from another gorgeous vintage paper in the collage box. I think I'll also use this one for the front of a greetings card.

Please don't hold your breath for the kit: it's still work in progress because naturally, once I'd made a couple of papers, I got side-tracked and wanted to play with them myself, to see if they would work...

Here's some digital mixed-media experimentation using the Brushes app on my iPad

Finally, I made a scrapbook layout, once again in Brushes on the iPad. The photograph is used by kind permission of a dear Twitter-friend...

Thank you Joanna in Poland for passing the box on to me.

If you'd like to see what others have created with their chosen snippets, take a trip to LaWendula's inspiring blog and follow the links, but don't leave here yet because in my last post, I promised that I would finally reveal the name of the person who'd won my second bloggerversary draw. Actually, as I'd left it so long, I decided that I'd draw two names out of the hat and the lucky winners are...drum roll...ta da!

Kelly Marzycki of Imbue Studio

and...

Deb (of Dryad Art: really sorry to the other Deb!)

Kelly and Deb, please feel free to take a good look around my Flickr stream and choose a print of any of my work, including older digital collages but please bear in mind that much of my early iPhoneography was done at very low-resolution and will not print well. Having said that, if you'd really like one of those pieces, let me know and I'll see what I can do for you before asking you to make a second choice.

Now, some of you have asked if my cat is still in the Land Of The Living. I'm overjoyed to share the news that Tinky has perked-up considerably since my last post. However, she remains a poorly little creature and is now VERY fussy about her food. The general rule is that if it is expensive, warm, and hand-fed, she's interested, but anything less, forget it! Having survived a near-death experience, she probably imagines that she's died and gone to Heaven!

Here is the link to LaWendula's blog