holy mackeral... and other cards from the last week of ICAD

it's hard to believe it's the last day of the 2017 version of the index card a day project. those 61 days just flew by at an incredible pace! luckily i have my big bulging book of cards to remind me of how much fun i had. ♥

day 51: swim

hey look! it's a collage of colorburst, vintage paper and funky fish!

(because YEAH the collage obsession is still strong in these parts lol!)

day 52: adjective

ok, you might need more than one... :) :) :) 

basically an excuse to play with elisabeth's ken oliver cut-n-color mandala flower stamps and dies, in a colorburst + zing embossing powder context. 

day 53: off prompt

it wouldn't be ICAD if there wasn't an ogee pattern in there somewhere, lol. this one is punched and stacked colorburst circles with loads of messy stitching.

day 54: "greetings from"

in this case, greetings from crazy collage land?! because the lure to use colorburst, rubber stamps, modeling paste, vintage paper and a russian made Gaz sedan from the

n awesome book of car illustrations i scored at a garage sale all together, on the same tiny card, was JUST. TOO. STRONG.

day 55: sepia

sepia colorburst, to be exact; painted into a sort of mehndi/henna design.

day 56: off prompt

a bit of a rainbow collage shout-out to the lovely tammy g and all of the ICAD gang on instagram.

day 57: spring

slightly tangential take on the prompt. more of an excuse to use my new favorite donna downey stencil... with colorburst, gelatos, rubber stamps, modelling paste, vintage paper, the typewriter, the sewing machine and... no, ok, i think that's it, lol.

day 58: summer

because there's nothing more summery than a pair of rainbow painted colorburst index cards with loads of stabilo pen doodles on top. right?!

day 59: autumn

a while ago, my mom gave me a bunch of older nature conservancy seals that have gorgeous illustrations on them. quite recently, she gave me a whole lot of vintage slide mounts. i'm pretty sure everyone else will be tired of the combination before i am, for which i apologize in advance...

day 60: winter

it turns out that little snips of paint chip make almost as good a frame as vintage slide mounts. who knew?

(technically this is not especially wintery, but it is ALL WHITE, so there's that!)

day 61: sunset
done in two layers: a colorburst watercolor sunset on the lower tabbed card; a mandala-style outline on the upper acrylic card. deliberately very similar to "day 1: sunrise" since we've come full circle.

and finally here's the whole bulgy, messy, sprawly book of 61 (plus a few extras!) cards:

a reminder that all the info and inspiration for ICAD and beyond is available at daisy yellow art all throughout the year! check it out, darlings! i'm going to make an album for these somewhere... maybe FB... meanwhile you can see the whole collection (you know, if you have insomnia or something, lol?) on instagram or in this blog thread. thanks for hanging out with me during 61 days! ♥♥♥

still ICAD-ing over here...

although i must say that july seems to be racing past even more quickly than june; which is rather astonishing. but you know what they say, "time flies when you're making tiny, experimental works of art on index cards" or... you know... words to that effect. ;)

here are this week's cards from the amazing, if almost-over (how is that possible?!) 2017 index card a day project:

day 45: night sky

i haven't done as many colorburst watercolor ICADs this year, for the most prosaic of reasons: i only have a few extra-heavy, white tabbed cards (the kind that don't actually disintegrate when you use wet media on them) left! but obviously this NEEDED to be a watercolor! a blend of fuchsia, wisteria and indigo, to be exact.

(brace yourself for a massive watercolor phase in august though, lol!)

day 46: love

as in "love, comma, everything that i..."

(specifically layers and layers of vintage bits, with some machine stitching on top!)

(the machine stitching is actually in the shape of a heart, a fact that's only noticeable on the back of the card, lol)

day 47: layers

do you ever have an idea that is so persistent you literally cannot think of anything else until you've got it out onto paper? this was one of those. and OF COURSE it's not an idea i needed *now*! it's actually for one of my sept/oct classes. but i suddenly thought of a way to combine collage and stamping in a way that i'm not sure anyone else has combined collage and stamping. the collage is loosely overlapped scraps of vintage paper which fit inside a (rough) frame; the stamping is on 2 or 3 torn scraps of parchment paper and colored on the back with alcohol ink, then the fragments are "reassembled" to make one image. in this case a flower-- in the class it'll be a leaf!

(act surprised when you see the actual leafy cards at the end of august on the paper anthology class page, k thx!)

 

day 48: intersection

in lieu of actual paintings, however, i've been working in as many pre-painted colorburst scraps as possible, in collage form. 

b/c YEAH, i save all the little bits that didn't work out how i wanted at the time, and the offcuts on which i painted the extra pre-mixed color. to you they may look like a mess, but i see TREASURE from which i can construct funky mandalas on top of a vintage maps! ♥

day 49: off prompt

a "simple" idea that wound up taking FOREVER, lol. and another use of the rainbow hoard, actually. hand-cut chevrons, in rainbow colors, arranged in a sort of starburst pattern.

(this took sooooo muuuuuuch longer than that sentence implies, but 'nuff said...)

day 50: sun or moon

more scraps and leftovers. the bits that make up the mandala/sun/flower were from a gelatos class; b/c i have to demo the technique each time, so i wind up with duplicates. i expect that normal people toss those, or make them into cards? ok, let's face it, i have no idea what normal ppl do, lol, and it'll never apply to me anyway, so i stick them in with the colorburst "leftovers". on the plus side, i always have something interesting to grab at times like these, so i'm callin' that a win! ;)

♥♥♥

i'll be (wo)manning the shop at paper anthology today, so if you're running errands anywhere near kenvil, nj, stop in and say HOWDY! 

*WHERE* exactly did this week go??!

seriously, i'm pretty sure time is passing much more quickly than usual. and not just because i've been having fun doing ICAD with my nieces and nephew. though i have. and it is *AWESOME*! here are the cards i made this week. you might be shocked to see there is quiiiiiite a bit of collage, lol!

 day 39: ampersand

i used an oversized ampersand from a pack of chipboard letters to trace the shape onto a panel of gelato crayons over white emboss resist that was leftover from a class last winter. (a have a few more discarded versions of the flower flourish design, so act surprised when you see something similar in future, lol!) and then i layered it over... waiiiiiit forrrrrrrrrrr iiiiiiiitttttttt... a random vintage paper collage! ;)

day 40: steampunk

of course the first thing most people think of when they hear the term "steampunk" is fish-based flying machines.
obviously.

(srsly, i have no idea, this is just what happened, k?)

day 41: roots

a bit tangential, admittedly. but this was partially a collage for my mother who wonders why i can't make some ICADs that are *pretty* lol.

day 42: onomatopoeia

for the record, i am NEVER going to be able to spell that word without looking it up. meanwhile, another collage... with another vintage car on it...

(i could probably do a whole month just of those cars, but i'll spare you...)

day 43: off-prompt

a collage with more layers than anything else in this post, and yet it's almost entirely FLAT. ingredients include:
a stamped index card
part of a vintage map
a nature dictionary description of hibiscus
a scrap of sewing pattern (in French!)
a Japanese tag
three kinds of vellum
 two kinds of tissue paper
scraps of awesome birch bark patterned giftwrap
a metric measuring chart
and six different rubber stamps, including the palm trees which my friend barb brought back from hawaii for me years and years ago and which i still absolutely love

day 44: blue
still a collage, but this time a collage consisting of previously made colorburst essperiments, including several unsuccessful attempts to paint a watercolor galaxy; a tinted modelling paste idea that i like but it didn't work of what i wanted at the time; and an offcut of the cerulean sky from friday's jingle belles card. thus proving there are no *surplus* colorburst pages... just ones you haven't used yet...

hope this day finds you on your way to doing something FUN! if you need me this afternoon, i'll be at my mom's house, with the kiddos, wreaking collage-based havoc all over her kitchen table, darlings! grab your gluestick and come play!!! ♥♥♥

there are index cards EVERYWHERE!

which is just the way i like it!

day 32: desert or dessert

i compromised with a DESSERT ISLAND! featuring another die --the awesome palm tree-- from stephanie; i've used it on a leftover bit of colorburst-ed watercolor paper on which i used up several shades of green and a tiny bit of blue from another project; thus proving that there's never any SURPLUS colorburst experiments, just ones you haven't used yet!!! 

day 33: orange

more yummy colorburst, this time in shades of tangerine, orange, lemon and verrrrrrrrry diluted fuchsia. i painted the mandala shapes, let them dry, then came in with some paint pen and marker details on top. in case you're wondering, "hey lauren, aren't ordinary index cards a bit too thin to use for watercolor?" well... yeah... they are, really. even working pretty dry and blotting each color (which is how i got such soft pastel shades!) this card had warped considerably by the time i was done. so after it dried, i did quite a bit of smoothing and stretching to get it --more or less-- flat again. 

  

day 34: fourth of july

i'm not sure i've ever done this much collage during ICAD! i hope it isn't too boring to see, but i've been enjoying it so much, and since these cards are my "treat" at the end of each day, i just go along with whatever feels the most FUN!

day 35: favorite type of apple

yep. it's another collage! this one's composed of vintage bits, rice paper (which is so thin it's hard to see in the pic, but adds a lovely texture irl) and ink. my favorite part of this is that the sequin scrim pocket was just a few little leftover scraps which i used to demonstrate, for my nephew matthew, how the sewing machine works. after which, he sewed a bit of netting to one of his ICADs! 

♥♥♥ 

day36: off prompt

a "clean up" collage of bits that were laying around on my art table. some loose ink + overstamp flowers that didn't afterall make it into the garden book; a tiny snip of vintage photo, and loads of different sheet music scraps that i tried to piece together like a puzzle. oh and a bit of drywall tape --my new favorite weird collage item, lol-- on top. it's funny that whereas, in other years, the 3x5" format has seemed constraining to me... this year that feels like the PERFECT size; so i'm just rollin' with it...

 day 37: off prompt (again) 

another colorburst mandala card! this time tangerine, lemon and olive are my colors, and i was trying to play with layers of color without making my divider tab card so wet that it got all pilly. thus my design has morphed into a kind of fiery, flowery, swirly hybrid! 

 day 38: charcoal

i started off with the best of intentions: i'd follow the prompt, albeit tangentially, by making a collage entirely from greyscale ingredients. i got as far as the ballerina, and the next thing i knew, there were all these other non-black and white bits! including a scrap of glittery papaya art giftwrap that they no longer even make, so i'm kind of happy to commemorate that in collage form! 

♥♥♥

hope your monday has started off well and that this will be the best week of your summer so far!

♥♥♥

ICAD, U-CAD?

if not... you still totally could join the index card a day project for the month of july! there's no need to catch up, or commit to every single day, honestly. it will still "count" i promise! check out the prompts and make as many --or as few-- as appeal to you! or "go rogue" and use a few index cards to experiment with a collage technique you've always wanted to try; or a stamp you love but haven't used yet; or even to play around with that really cool supply you bought because EVERYONE was using it... but then... you got a bit intimidated and decided not to open the package? (because we ALL have at least one of those, don't we??!?!) 

meanwhile, here are the crazy ideas that went swirling through my head last week, and landed on various index cards:

day 26: portrait 

couldn't decide between a tiny composer portrait from some cool vintage sheet music my sweet friend ometa pope shared with me, or FDR on a postage stamp. so i went with both. bc in collage, the more the merrier i say!!! :)

day 26: green

these started out as colorburst "blotter" cards from when i was making some of the smooshy birds, to which i added bits of paper, random stamping, some ancient, unrelated, last-in-the-packet rub-ons and... well, if it was on my worktable at the time, it probably wound up on one of these cards, lol.

day 27: off prompt

there's never a BAD time, imo, for a distress ink rainbow mandala with pen doodles on top!

day 28: dashboard

admittedly a tangential take on the prompt, but in this context that's sort of the point. when i'm making stuff for assignments or challenges, and i start veering off in a completely different direction, i need to steer back onto course. with ICAD, i can just GO WITH IT and see what happens. which is actually incredibly cool and fun!

day 29: polka dots

or in this case: polka + dots; the latter being little discs i punched from a leftover colorburst + flower stamping experiment that i didn't love, but it was too pretty to throw away.

day 30: gyroscope

deconstructed gyroscope. or possibly "gyroscope that's been involved in a serious accident could you call for help please"??

day 31: faux wallpaper

more colorburst castoffs and leftovers. made into wallpaper swatches. kinda. let's just go with it, k? 

♥♥♥

thanks for hanging out with me!

 i hope today that you will sneak in some creative time that is JUST FOR FUN!

♥♥♥

have ICADs, will travel

i'm seriously a bit freaked out by how quickly june is flying by--it seems like we only just changed that page on the calendar last week, doesn't it? but then time flies when you're having fun, and the index card a day project is nothing if not a blast!

day 18: alphabetize

when cling stamps come all lined up neatly on a backer, i usually want to ink them all and use them as ONE BIG STAMP. so i did.

day 19: gears or gadgets

truthfully, i don't love how either of my ideas turned out.

...BUT...

i made both of these cards at my mom's kitchen table, with my sister, niece, nephew, mom and aunt also attacking index cards with markers, stickers, scissors and gluestick. 

so in a kinda sorta way... 

these are both my FAVORITE!!!

(this is the pic + caption my niece maddie took in the middle of our art camp day to taunt her cousins, via text. a manoeuver of which i would thoroughly disapprove, except they started it by sending us a photo of the beach they were on, first. so clearly, payback had to be made, lol!!!)

day 20: off prompt

yep, it's another freestyle, handcut mandala, this time using scraps of vintage paper. i think i'm starting to get the hang of cutting the shapes to fit each successive round, without outlining first. i have no idea why that's a skill i feel compelled to master, but for some reason i do, so i'm just going with it...

day 21: simplicity

to a lot of people, "simplicity" would mean they should pare down the design, use fewer elements, less of a grunge factor, and not so many layers. to me it means, "add some sewing pattern ladies"!

day 22: vanishing point

this started with a card from some earrings i bought, that just happened to have the image of birch trees and a very strong central vanishing point. in the end, i feel like my collage somewhat obscures that very feature. but on the other hand, i like the small, tiled bits of cut up card added in randomly as a "background" and i had a blast stamping and inking and trimming a couple of cards that had rejected colorburst stencilling on them, so that's the main thing!

day 23: off prompt
probably the fastest card i've made so far, as it is composed almost entirely of leftovers from other projects, most notably a little pink and green flower booklet that is going to be one of my july/aug classes at paper anthology.
(for the record that is the SLOWEST class project i've ever made; sometimes it's hard to walk the line between how you want a thing to *look* and what is do-able by a group, sharing tools, in 3 hours!)

day 24: off prompt
what i love most about ICAD is that i can try really crazy things and not worry if they're going to work or not. in this case, it's a bit of an "or not". when you're drawing mandalas, especially in a small space like a 3x5" index card, it's often good (and more dynamic looking) to draw bits of three different mandalas, letting them go off the edges, than just a tiny, centered one. so i thought that might also be true for mandalas made of tiny kawaii stickers. as it turns out, not so much. on the other hand, the great thing about not really liking your experiment is that you're not worried about "wrecking" it if you try a few more experiments on top. in this case i thought maybe pen doodles and an smudgey inked background would fix everything. they didn't, but  they are definitely interesting, and i'm pretty sure i'll be trying this again! :)

in case you were thinking, "gosh this all looks like fun, but ICAD is nearly half over now, so it's way too late for me to start, and i'd never be able to catch up!" ok, for one thing, there's no need to catch up; just start now and move forward. but yeah, if you want to play along, in real time, with a social crowd on facebook or instagram, you're only going to have about 36 days instead of 61. but that's still 36 awesome opportunities to make something fun, creative and agenda-free, in the company of really cool folks. and who's to say, at the end of july, you won't want to keep going? but truly, the number, the date and the "official" prompts are just the trimmings of ICAD, it's the chance to play every day that matters. i'm willing to bet there are a few index cards somewhere in your house... :) :) :)

3x5... x6

what's that? you wish there were half a dozen funky new ICADs to look at since my last update? well, that's handy, because LOOK what i've got right here:

day 12: wings

any excuse to make a tiny colorburst painting, that's my motto! 

(i'm secretly kinda really pleased with the shading on this... just sayin'...)

day 13: echo/repeat

this makes more sense for the prompt if you realize that to me, these kind of look like the soundwave graphics on those equalizer thingies that everyone had in the 80's. but mostly, i found a link i'd saved to maud vantours' "oscillations" series and became instantly re-obsessed with them; so i probably would've made this fit whatever the prompt was, lol.

day 14: leaves

so i was doodling on green vellum envelope that was sitting on my desk...

(in retrospect, i think i added too many collage layers to this at least for it to be a 3x5 index card; however i reserve the right to revisit this idea on a bigger scale and add EVEN MORE stuff to it!)

day 15: starburst

because all you really NEED for ICAD is a pen and some index cards!!!!!

(ps: this is made from all the weird little offcuts leftover from making the 3D tetrahedron!)

 day 16: rainbow

this is my first attempt at a freestyle, handcut mandala... by which i mean that i didn't draw the outlines first, just tacked on each successive layer to the back, then went at it with the scissors. not a lot of variation, but not bad, considering... pretty sure you'll see more like this! ;)

day 17: sprout

kind of a cheat, but it was getting late and i had lots of pink and green flowery bits leftover from another project i'm working on...

wishing you a happy father's day if you're celebrating, or just a really pleasant sunday with hopefully a bit of creative fun in store! ♥