Saturday, March 26, 2011

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

8 comments:

LaWendula said...

Darling, this is so beautiful!!!!
And my algebra page is so well represented! *lol*
Love your collage to bits!
Thanks for sharing! xox

Nettie Edwards said...

So it was YOUR paper! I think I chose quite a few of yours: lots of German text and writing. Thank YOU for imagining such a brilliant project x

Nettie Edwards said...

Mr Cachet: I just managed to delete your kind comment, accidentally: I'm so sorry:-( Glad to read that you might be joining the Paper Swap or Collage Box Project!

Jo Archer said...

Fabulous textures!

I'm just catching up on my blogs again and your photographs are incredibly good. Haunting and beautiful. You get better and better.

Have you exhibited anywhere yet?

Nettie Edwards said...

Thanks for stopping by Jo and for your positive feedback! Yes, I've had work in a few shows but nothing of my own. I'll blog about that next!

Jolette said...

Nice to see what you did with the papers of the collage box!
It's beautiful, i like what you did with photoshop!
Now it's my turn....

Jolette

Seth said...

LaWendula has the best swaps. I love what you created digitally!

deb said...

you amaze me!and I am amazed I have won! And yes!! the book arrived and is busy inspiring more work in my studio, sorry, I really meant to send a note but I have been insanely busy. No excuse tho. Thank you :)