String girls and the creative process

Fly with me
Originally uploaded by allisongryski
On Saturday, I was playing with some bits of jute twine snippings and out of that came these string girls. The first one was actually Sun girl because I started by making the sun and then I was experimenting with knotting the leftover bits of twine. It was quite an organic process as I just followed what the medium told me and suddenly, a form appeared. My creative method sometimes starts with a fully formed idea in my mind, which I then attempt execute. This can be a frustrating method when I can't achieve what I saw in my mind's eye, but it can also be very satisfying to conceive a vision, then make it reality. But there's a certain joy to the magic of just playing with things and letting one thing lead to the next. You end up with this sense of natural creation.... that it was meant to be that way.

Did you notice the pink tulips on the Sun Girl card? Those were a bit of the Petits Gateaux box.

These cards are difficult to photograph because of their three-dimensional nature. I've left the arms, legs, and pigtails free, so they have a lovely sense of movement in person... like they're reaching off the card.

Photo cards are on their way...

Architectural card preview
Originally uploaded by allisongryski
The photo shop finally got the printing of my photos correct (oh, the saga!) and I was able to make some cards at last. I *love* how they turned out. I've got to take some better pictures of the cards when I have a sunny day. For now, these artificial-lighting-then-GIMP'd ones will have to whet your appetite. You can see some of the other cards in my Papery set.

A rainbow of envelopes

A rainbow of envelopes
Originally uploaded by allisongryski

Enough with the boring shipping rates (though I'm hopeful that those tables will be both useful to me in the future and save someone else the trouble of digging through all the different pages and docs).... but on to the pretty paper stuff!

I'm planning a new order of cardstock, which means that it's time to choose some envelope colours. Seriously, picking out colours is by far the most fun part of ordering supplies. As a child, I used to love looking at all the pencil crayon colours in art stores. You know the kind where each one is sold separately and there are a bazillion shades of each colour. Fun.

Anyway, last time, in addition to some red, blue, bright pink, and lime green envelopes, I ordered the sample pack so that I could see all the colours in actuality. It's proved very useful as some colours are much prettier in real life (and some, well, beige is beige). It also means that I can hold them right up to the ink or photograph for the best match. I've narrowed it down by half, to 11 colours. Anyone who knows me wouldn't be surprised to hear that the 3 shades of orange were the easiest for me to edit out. (I like orange fine.... in sunsets and flowers and pumpkins. But not so much on anything man-made). Though, as I write this, I realise that the dark orange would probably look great if I make photo cards with some of my squash or poppy photos. hmmm.

You see my problem: as soon as I eliminate a colour, I think of where it would be perfect and my stack grows larger again.

Dreaming up new ideas

I'm working on some new card design ideas. I've added a poll to the left column of the blog with some of the things I'm considering. Please pick your favourites!

I am thinking about getting some linocut materials as I'm interested to see how this compares to the rubber stamps. It does require figuring out how you print linocuts without a press. This may involve mounting the linoleum on something like a block of wood, but I've also seen a tutorial showing people using the press method without a press. I'll have to experiment to determine which way gives the best results.

Just a little note....

The cardstock and colourful envelopes that I ordered arrived last week and what fun I've had! I've been busy printmaking with stamps that I hand-carved and the result is a stack of cute cards. I'll be adding them to the my shop over the next few days, but this is a delicious little preview of a few of my favourites.

I was having so much fun that I ran out of cardstock much faster than I expected. So I'll be ordering some more and looking into supplies for photo cards.

I'm interested to know which ones appeal to people most.