Making of a Whispered Autumn Song

Some pictures I forgot to add. I had some trouble determining what or whom the fairy was singing too.

Decisions decisions…

Here is the card as it was then. I cut off the left side later, to balance the card more. I had wanted to make some more shade there, but it was distracting. Around the fairy are some stamps that might fit in there. Maybe the unicorns, coming in from the left of the card? All grey stamps are Chocolate Baroque, the red rubber is from Designs by Ryn, the white ones are from the set Pixie Glade by ?? (I’ve got them for quite a while). The pinkish stamp (high heels) is VivaLasVegas, as is the stamped, coloured and cut out gnome. The roughly stamped butterfly and castle are Chocolate Baroque too, as is the stamped, coloured and cut out mushroom barely seen on the left.

I stamped several images roughly and cut them out, to see how it looked.

This one looked like the sitting fairy is said, and the fairy behind her is watching her reaction while the big fairy sings.

This is the mushroom that was a left over from a failed card, and which I had wanted to use in the Psychedelic Party card but which was too big. It could be nice here, with the bird sitting on top of it.

Or would she be singing to a butterfly about the passing of days, the end of summer?

 

This one was a favourite of mine for a long time – like the gnome had been bad and got a speech. Or maybe the opposite, he was quite heroic and was praised? The gnome was stamped and cut for another card but I didn’t use it for that card. It’s a Viva las VegaStamp, and tiny, but cute.

His height didn’t match her LOS, so what if I raised him onto a mushoom? Gnomes do go well with mushrooms.

Or maybe she’s singing to a little elf castle, hoping to sing the elfs out? And that cheeky gnome just standing there, ready to do something naughty?

I think now I had too much mushroom tea and got a bit silly. What if she was having lunch with a cup of tea, and used the mushroom as a table?

Or this one, where the fairy is leaning toward her to listen. (Gnome is still hanging around.) I liked this one best, but I wanted some colour on the fairy.

Yup that is my table, and the workspace remaining in the end. I coloured some paper with the ranger airbrushtool and distress markers, then stamped and clearembossed the fairy and cut her out.

 

Here us the result. That note on the left, with “Fever” on it – I was trying some words for the Psychedelic party, and tried “disco fever”.

  And a closeup of the result. (and behind her you can see a big tip of mine: on all sides of your inkpad, glue down a strip, coloured with that ink and write the name on it. I started doing that on only 1 side, but then you have to stack the boxes neatly each time. So then I did 2 sides. But still too much searching. So now it’s 4 sides, just white paper and plain tape – if I would just glue down the paper it would be smudged in no time I bet, so cover it with something ink-resistant.)

(Don’t take any advice from me about cutting your stamps, as I sometimes cut the stamps first and then put them on the mounting foam, then cut them out. It doesn’t always match well, and if I stamp edges, then I cut those away after. I realize now that I should probably do it the other way around, and remove more from the cushion then from the stamp. Or would the stamp bend to the paper then?

If you remember the card, you might think: huh, but there was a fairy and a flower on it, not another fairy!

That’s right. I found the colours didn’t match, and the coloured silhouette didn’t work with the stamped and non-silhouette big fairy.

So I searched for a right sized image of something that would fit, and found this flower from Chocolate Baroque.

The flower is stamped directly on the card, anything glued on would not match with this scene, it would take away the focus of the fairy too much. There’s red glitter on the flower, the harp is shimmering gold, as is the “fur” on her wings.

A picture says more then 1000 words they say, so let me just take a picture of it now.

And now you can also see how the fairy doesn’t fit:

It’s not just her glossyness, the colours were not for this card.

 

I stored her in a box with more pretty cards / backgrounds, and put her on top of some sheets I had made with bister. She fits on those better!

Not a great picture, the detail is missing from the backgrounds, but the colours sure are great 🙂 Now I just need to make some cards out of them.

The psychedelic mushrooms-fairy

Well she isn’t that psychedelic at all herself. Then again, usually the dealers aren’t addicted…

Here she is:

She’s got her own vices. Sitting on a mushroom, smelling the flowers.

The fair+ mushrooms + branch behind her are all one stamp, the flower is another. I also used a nature fragments stamp for the treetrunks around her. Here is another use of my home made marbled pearls.

This is my second entry for the Chocolate Baroque Colour challenge #3

One card left for this challenge! So we’ve explored our own psychedelic imagination, visited the fairies, then what else could be next then the mysterious orient?

 

Not a standard birthannouncement card – Freya – Part 1

It’s a girl!

First of all, let me start by announcing the birth of my 2nd child, Freya. She was born on a Friday (jay! I hoped she would!), on the 12th of October 2012 (pretty date, huh?). Labour went well, my recovery also. Now we’re trying to get a routine going again, and find a way to handle 2 kids at once.

Tobias, now aged 18+ months (he’s from 8th of April 2011), ofcourse has to get used to the new situation. If that isn’t enough, he’s starting to get into the “terrible two’s” phase. He can’t talk yet (though does say a few words and is practicing), so he expresses his feelings physically. He ofcourse feels frustrated about not being able to express himself clearly, and probably also some anger about the changed situation, he isn’t the only one in the house who gets attention from mom and dad now. So he hits, bites, pinches, scratches us and the new baby. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a very sweet boy, loves to help with things, gives kisses to anyone who stays behind when he goes out (like when his dad brings him to the daycare, both me and Freya gets a kiss) or when he goes to bed he gives us all kisses. He does touch Freya, wants to pretend play a bit with her – when he has a spoon he tries to give it to her too – but it soon evolves into hitting or scratching. He does know it’s not allowed, but he can’t place himself into someone elses shoes yet, so he doesn’t understand it hurts. I’ve searched a bit on the internet and it’s a phase kids (can) go through. Let’s hope it doesn’t last too long (hmm, some claim it never stops – hitting/fighting with a younger sibling that is!)

Now back to the birthannouncementcard.

*

A card with a story

Besides crafting a lovely sweet daughter in my belly, I’ve made the birthannouncement card.
A few things that I drew inspiration from:

• The comic “Thorgal” (see also http://www.thorgal.com)
• Her name
• The season she would be born in (fall) – No super girly cutesy pink kind of theme

*

Thorgal

First, the comic. I have several comics of the serie Thorgal, and I love the drawings and the kind of Scandinavian mythology. I love the website. That is where I got the idea of having these kind of layers: a nature background, then a cutout layer on top of it with shapes of leaves in it (the fall theme), and then a silhouette of something to do with the baby.

*

The name Freya

From the wiki page:

In Norse mythology, Freyja (Old Norse the “Lady“) is a goddess associated with love, beauty, fertility, gold, seiðr, war, and death. Freyja is the owner of the necklace Brísingamen, rides a chariot pulled by two cats, owns the boar Hildisvíni, possesses a cloak of falcon feathers, and, by her husband Óðr, is the mother of two daughters, Hnoss and Gersemi. Along with her brother Freyr (Old Norse the “Lord“), her father Njörðr, and her mother (Njörðr’s sister, unnamed in sources), she is a member of the Vanir. Stemming from Old Norse Freyja, modern forms of the name include Freya, Frejya, Freyia, Frøya, Frøjya, and Freia.

And if you search for images, you find many images of her on her chariot, being pulled by two cats.

So that would be the silhouette: Freya being pulled by two cats. But this is a sweet baby Freya, not a godess going to war or something, so it’s two cats pulling a baby carriage.

*

Season

The season is fall. Fall with it’s beautifull shapes, the leaves, with the playfull wind blowing them all around, and with the fresh rain that washes the sweat from the summer away. The leaves were allready incorporated through the Thorgal theme. Fall with it’s beautifull warm colours, the greens, browns, yellow, reds and gold. Only, the first few choices I made as colours made the image quite dark. As it is custom printed, it was not possible to add gold accents to the card. Or maybe it is but then it would cost lots more money I suppose. My other objection to gold colours was that it might look like an announcement of death, isn’t that often with a gold line around the card? So after some searching for colours I finally found some I was quite ok with. Yellow and green.
Coïncidentally, the colours of The Hague are yellow and green as well (though a brighter shade).

Color testing

You can also see some rough sketches of the carriage and the cats, and different backgrounds. More on the cats later.

*

Further design and assembly

With these things in mind I set out to make the card. I did use a screenshot of the Thorgal page as template, enlarged it, traced around it, cut away, filled in etc. I searched for a background image. Wouldn’t it be fun if it was made from a real photograph? So I went out an made pictures of trees and parks in the area. I didn’t want them to look like photo’s, I wanted them to look like drawings, in the Thorgal style. So lots of trial and error before I was happy with the result.

Original image on the left, edited image (with an insert of Tobias) on the right.

This is the source of the insert of Tobias. His face isn’t in focus but you don’t notice on the card as it’s quite small there. The legs you see are from my partner, ofcourse I didn’t let Tobias climb up there without someone standing near!

A tiny bit of the wall around the property Huis Ten Bosch of the Dutch Queen is visible in the background.

So that was the background and the colours. On to the carriage and cats!

*

Carriage and cats

No interesting story about the carriage, first I hand-drew a carriage and cats, then scanned it and used it for layout purposes (see the colourtesting for my terrible drawings). After that I used the scan as a template to make the drawing better. Oh, and all of this I did in Paint.Net (a free photoshop like editing program). For the cats I searched high and low on teh internetz. It’s hard to find an image of a running cat!

So I finally found images of running cats. I edited them a bit. Decided a silhouette wouldn’t work, neither with the carriage, it would be just a black (or white) blob. So it would be some sort of false silhouettes, with some lines in them to make the carriage and cats clearer. After lots of hard work, I was done. But then I wasn’t. It just didn’t feel right – Tobias on the left, smiling, while the baby carriage is pulled away by cats? No no no, she’s arriving, not leaving! (I didn’t want to tempt fate by adding a golden (mourning) lining or inserting cats that run away with my baby… call me crazy, but hey, she wasn’t born yet, and although I had no reason to worry, babies do die sometimes during labour, and mom’s sometimes too, so I always say: First, the baby and me have to survive labour, and then we’ll see from there.)

So away with running cats. I didn’t want to use internet images as I had gotten them from sites that actually require you to pay for the image. So what now?

Hmm

Well, we have a cat. An old one, he’s Charlie and he’s 23. He has a tumor by the way, he will probably die within a few months. We’ll miss him a lot, but he has had a long and good life. He is not in pain right now, or at least, we don’t think he’s in much pain. Cats are tough animals, it’s hard to tell when they’re in pain. But he still eats well, goes to the litterbox and enjoys the heater and attention from us (not from Tobias) a lot! At night, when Freya is finally sleeping, he comes up (I always say, and here is baby number 3 wanting attention!) and wants me to pet him. He miauws loudly. He has a bad breath. And he likes to meouw right next to my face or turns around to look at something, meanwhile almost putting his behind on my face. As he’s old and his hips are stiff and he can’t maintain himself easily, I am very scared of his behind. On several occasions it wasn’t clean. So there goes my sleepiness. If it isn’t his behind, it’s his tail under my nose. He has very effective ways of me betraying to him that I am not sleeping. (The breath is also a very good one!)

Charlie with his laser eyes

Not entirely in focus, but hey, it’s for a silhouette. And here he finally looked up.

So, Charlie is my model. It does show he’s old, with his fur not being that smooth and the curve in his back being high, but I kind of like that. The old cat brings the young baby. Charlie used to have an older brother, Fred, but he was put to sleep about 4 years ago. He had diabetes and kidney problems, and we found out too late, he was in pain allready. Charlie and his shadow, pulling the carriage. Not pulling, but resting after having pulled the carriage.

That’s the front of the card. It took me lots of hours, trial and error, but I’m pleased with it. Not everyone will like it, and without explanation the card has lots less meaning (like the picture in het Haagse Bos where we regularly walk, Tobias laughing at the new arrival, the fact that the cats aren ot running but resting, the Thorgal theme and lots more that fits with her name). It’s a unique card, and I hope she will like it when she is older.

Next post: the inside of the card and the backside!