A Bit of Birthday Art for My Mom!!

Happy Birthday Mom!!!

In case you didn’t figure it out by that first sentence, today is my mom’s birthday – I won’t tell you how old she is because…

1. That would just be rude.
2. You’re never too old for your mom to dole out a bit of corporal punishment on your behind (not that I’ve EVER done anything to deserve being punished at any age).
3. If you knew her age, you might be able to figure out how old I am. EEK!!

And since I hate buying birthday cards and since mom’s are supposed to just love homemade things from their kids, I thought I’d make my mom a card for her birthday.

Operation Birthday Card started out okay. In my art journal last week, I had made a quick sketch of a flower using Derwent Inktense. It turned out pretty well so I thought, “Hey, that would look nice on a Mom card.” It did, but the placement was weird and when I tried to make a border to doll it up, things went downhill faster than a fat kid on roller skates (that would have been me by the way – very tubby and very non-gifted in the athletic department as a child).

This “oops” card was so bad I didn’t even take a picture of any of it except for the flower itself.

Since I’m a little addicted to the technique right now, I started thinking about doing some sort of collage thing using what’s left of my pack of mulberry paper. With his love of birthday celebrations, Finn McSpool thought he’d help out, but I quickly noticed he was trying to throw in too many purple scraps (his favorite color). When I saw a piece stuck to his head, I thought that maybe wool-based monsters and glue don’t mix.

Once I busied Finn with looking up cake recipes, I was able to arrange some scraps on a card. And as a nod to Finn, I did manage to squeeze in a bit of purple.

So I had a background on a new card and I had my flower painting I salvaged from the “oops” card. I didn’t want to simply glue the flower onto the card base since I didn’t know how well it would hold. I then remembered seeing in one of the many art books I have Mr. Husband lug home from work that you can use your sewing machine to sew paper together. Seemed like it was as good a time as any to try this notion out (haha, “notions”…sorry).

The sewing actually worked! I may need to replace my needle now, but I think the stitching gave the flower piece a nice border.

Finally, it was time to trim away the excess collage work from the edges of the card and call it complete.

 

Ah, but I can’t leave the inside completely blank. Re-using some of the washi tape that was going to be the border of the “oops” card and a cut out from one of my own birthday cards, I gave the inside a bit of color.

As for more collage projects, well, I only have enough mulberry paper to try a couple small things, so I’m in online order limbo while I wait for a few more packs to arrive. In the meantime though,  I have finally found some motivation to start a new colored pencil piece. Unfortunately, after the speed with which I can complete a collage, my colored pencil work feels very, very, very slow.

What about you? Up to anything new? Celebrating any birthdays (Finn will come help, if you like)?