How I Make Postcards

My creative process is pretty haphazard.  I start by making a base for the postcards. I use cereal boxes or whatever kind of cardboard is handy. Then I get out my boxes of clippings. I've been saving scraps of paper for about 10 or 12 years. The collection just keeps expanding. For the last month or so I've been paring things away, and I hope to keep my papers contained in four old 10x10 Kodak boxes.

Sometimes I work on the dining table, but often I just spread my stuff out on the floor so I can see a lot of things at once.


I'll dump a box on the floor and pick out anything that catches my eye for a background.  As I continue to paw through my stash, I'll pick out faces or pieces of color that I think will look good on the backgrounds I've chosen. Often I'll see a story forming, so I'll be on the lookout for clippings that add to it. I have a smaller box of "snide remarks", a collection of words or phrases that I might go to for a caption, or maybe I'll look at the daily newspaper for odd headlines. I recently sorted my clippings, putting people in one box, backgrounds in a second box, etc. I think I will go back and mix them all up again, as I get more interesting combinations that way.

Sometimes I paint my cardboard bases with acrylic paint. Lately I've been using a lot of Pyrrole Red. Most times my background papers will cover most of the card, but having a colored background is nice for when the clippings don't quite cover the whole card. Besides, I love playing with paint.

I was trying to replicate some of the colors in this desert scene. Fun fun fun!

And here are four potential postcards gleaned from my sorting process. There seemed to be a sort of "space age" thing going on, so I picked out a few rockets & space helmets, and then a cactus & a cowboy for the desert landscape. All I need now is to fine tune the layouts, maybe find a caption, and stick everything down with a glue stick. Sometimes I use acrylic matte gel to attach my papers. It's messy, but it sticks things down really well. Sometimes I'll use the glue stick for everything, and at the end just go over the finished card with the matte gel to make sure pieces don't get torn off by the postal machinery.

          * Postcards that came from this particular mess
          * 2015 DIY Postcards - Birds set
          * 2015 DIY Postcards - Pop Art & Quotes
          * 2015 DIY Postcards - More Birds

Connect and share online --
Check out the art and processes of other Postcard Swap participants HERE!

unexpected pinkness

Last fall I planted a packet of wildflower seeds. I was hoping for bluebonnets and paintbrush, but so far what has been most plentiful are the non-native flowers, including these corn poppies. On this cool rainy day they look like luscious lollipops out in the back yard.

The Bird Exhibit

I don't usually have a theme in mind when I make a series of postcards; my process is too haphazard for that.  Recently though I clipped a lot of bird images, and some of them ended up on these cards, so I'm calling this series "The Bird Exhibit".

Stir It Up

Baby Birds

Bird Poem

Time for Happy Mail

I've been waiting for the lovely Hanna to announce one of her annual postcard swaps, and She Just Did! If you like getting pretty and/or unusual postcards from other creative souls, this international swap is a great opportunity for you. The only catch is you have to make ten postcards of your own to send. Head on over to Hanna's blog and sign up now!

I'll be posting my creations soon, as well as showing a bit of my creative process. Stay tuned!

invasion of the yellow-rumped warblers

For the second time in a week a small flock of 10-15 of these cute little critters descended on the back yard. Mostly they foraged in the grass or on the bare branches of a chinese tallow tree that has a few seeds still hanging on it. I snapped a few photos and I'm trying to figure out how to attach them to my observation checklist at ebird. I only discovered the site a few months ago; it's a great place to see what kind of birds other people may have spotted in your area.

orange & turquoise

A vintage Anholt ashtray I got for Christmas and a  lighter I picked up off the ground on one of my walks (It still works!) These ashtrays were originally ceramic and made by the Coors company of Colorado. This one however is a "safety" ashtray made of melamine and boy, howdy, do I love that boomerang shape. It just shouts "mid century" and that deep orange perfectly complements the color scheme I'm working on in my living room. One of these ashtrays appeared in Betty's interrogation scene in "Mad Men" a few years ago.

I'd never heard of the "Clipper" brand of lighters and noticed the URL had a dot.eu appended to it, so I looked it up; Clipper is based in Barcelona, Spain. There's an official site for the UK but not for the US. Upon a bit more searching I found these lighters are favored by pot smokers and except for online retailers are usually only found in head shops in the U.S. Judging from the prices listed on Amazon these lighters cost about twice as much as the disposable lighters I usually find laying around. This one's so cute with that Texas boot on it I'll probably keep it with my collection of miscellaneous junk after it stops working.

Mid Century Table Lamps

I love looking at old table lamps, and I usually wonder where and when they were made. I found this page from an old book on interior design printed in 1954. I was surprised to see one of my favorite lamps, the "Modern informal" in the upper right corner. I see them on ebay now & then and I've bid on several of them without success. I have a pair of table lamps, probably from the 1960s that I'm pretty happy with, but someday I'd like to replace them with a pair of those "modern informals". I don't think I've ever seen one with its original shade, but it's nice to know what it looked like. Vintage shades seem to be harder to come by than the lamps themselves.