Deck Project: Week 4

I'm finally caught up with my themes. This is the week 4 card finished in the actual week 4, by the way this is not all I've been creating; but the other things are Christmas presents for my Secret Santas and I cannot show them...I haven't even photographed them yet so I won't be tempted to show them ahead of time.

I could not really find a good match for this week's theme which was "ethereal"; so I used "Light" instead. This one is inspired by "Little Daylight" which is a Scottish fairy tale; from Wikipedia: "A king and queen gain a daughter, whom they name Daylight. They invite all the fairies who live in the woods by their palace, except one, newly arrived, who lives in the swamp and has everyone convinced she is a witch.

The fairy arrives anyway, and demands the baby's name. On hearing it is "Little Daylight" she says it shall be little daylight, as the princess would sleep all day. Another fairy gives her the gift of waking all night, but the swamp-fairy insists that she wasn't done with the curse, and that Daylight shall wax and wane with the moon. A second fairy says that the curse shall be broken when a prince kisses her without knowing it, and the swamp-fairy can not pretend again that she was not done.

As the princess grows up, she is beautiful and full of high spirits at the full moon, and as it wanes, turns wan and withered, as if sickly. The older she grows the more extreme the contrast becomes.

A nearby prince has to flee a revolt in his country and comes to the woods. He meets a fairy who is very cryptic with him, and then comes across Daylight dancing in the woods by moonlight. He sees her three nights in a row, as the moon is waxing to full, and falls in love. The third night, they have a conversation in which the princess tells him she has never seen the sun. He meets the fairy again and talks with her, but the fairy can not tell him the full curse.

The swamp-fairy discovers his presence and prevents him from finding her again until the moon is more than half gone; then, she thinks the withered princess will not attract him, so she relaxes her guard.

The prince finds Daylight again when the moon is new, and she is so withered and feeble that he spends the night trying to minister to her, and when carrying her to help, kisses her.

Dawn arrives, Daylight is restored to her full beauty, and she asks the prince whether the sun is coming."

Mixed Media. Watercolors, scrapbook paper, paint chips, music sheet, acrylics, tissue paper, metallic acrylic paints

Deck Project: Week 3

Last week was really hectic because students at school were completing their final evaluations for the year and on Friday we had the end of year show with the kids all singing and dancing to Disney movie songs. Everything worked out just great -if you take away the fact that there was a huge car accident that same morning and we had to start 30 minutes later because not all the kids were able to make it to school on time-. It was exhausting though and when it was all over I didn't have time -nor inspiration- to work on anything creative at all; I even skipped my Saturday class and chose to sleep in.

Now that kids are at home with their parents I can get some creative time each morning and I manage to get up to date with my deck project. This was the theme for last week "Darkness". This one is inspired by an Italian tale called "The Story of Bensurdatu"; a great king had 3 daughters who went on a picnic one day and got engulfed by a dark cloud where they disappeared. Bensurdatu who was the king's most loyal servant went out to search for them and rescued them from 2 giants and a serpent with seven heads. Bensurdatu married the youngest of the princess after returning to the kingdom.

Postcard size, with watercolors, tissue paper, mixed papers, acrylics, metallic acrylics and inks.

Deck Project: Week 2

The theme for week 2 was "Secret"; I did a bit of research to get inspired and I found an old Japanese tale called "The Crane Wife".

From Wikipedia: "The Crane Wife is an old Japanese tale. While there are many variations of the tale, a common version is that a poor man finds an injured crane on his doorstep (or outside with an arrow in it), takes it in and nurses it back to health. After he releases the crane, a woman appears at his doorstep with whom he falls in love and marries. Because they need money, his wife offers to weave wondrous clothes out of silk that they can sell at the market, but only if he agrees never to watch her making them. They begin to sell them and live a comfortable life, but he soon makes her weave them more and more. Oblivious to his wife's diminishing health, his greed increases. He eventually peeks in to see what she is doing to make the silk she weaves so desirable. He is shocked to discover that at the loom is a crane plucking feathers from her own body and weaving them into the loom. The crane, seeing him, flies away and never returns."

This is postcard size and it is mixed media; the face is done with watercolors, I used music sheet and white tissue paper for the feathers in the hair and in the neck with silver metallic acrylics and black ink on top. The background was done with orange tissue paper, aqua mulberry paper, watercolors, inks, and rub-on letters.

Deck Project: Week 1

Ok, so here's a new idea to wrap my head around... Shelly at Illustrated ATCs gave us the challenge of creating one piece of art a week for 52 weeks -a whole year!- and keeping it instead of trading it. I'm crazy about the whole concept for some basic reasons:
*All my art (large and small) is going to others all the time, it'll be nice to keep some of it for myself.
*Keeping the art for myself means I don't have to stress over other people liking it, AND I can experiment with different techniques
*She gave us a great list of topics to get inspired.

I have some guidelines I set for myself for this project -we'll see how long they last-
*I'm using postcards instead of playing cards as my base - I have trouble fitting mixed media and collage into an ATC.
*My deck will be inspired by the characters of fairy tales (will probably have to branch out to myths/legends with some of the tougher words).

This is my piece for the first week; the topic was pretend and I chose the wolf from Little Red Riding Hood as my first character. The wolf was painted with watercolors, the blanket/cap were done with patterned paper, and the background has collage pictures and papers, acrylics and watercolors, a rub-on letter and some black ink for the text.

Talk to the Hand

I joined a very cool mail art swap over at iATCs. I usually try to stick with trading ATCs because postage for anything larger than a regular size envelope can get pretty expensive, but there are some themes that I just cannot say no to.

These are actual outlines of my hands -which I've always considered to be too small...- we were asked to add a hand related quote to each one; these are not actual quotes but phrases of what hands can do for others.
I cut out the hands out of cardboard and added different paper, stamps, and postage stamps as a first layer. I then wrinkled a piece of purple tissue paper and added it on top. It was stencils and green paints over that and finished them with metallic acrylics and ink for the quotes.
I embellished the hands with different elements. I added some large sequins and beads to the bottom of the first hand in this post; the second one had some plastic stars added on top and I used 2 fabric flowers in the bottom; the third card has some fibers wrapped around the bottom and a string of beads along the fibers; the last one has some funky piece of ribbon which I attached with white eyelets and a wire beaded ring on the finger.

I See You...

I used wax crayons, gesso and acrylics in the background. I stenciled the stars and the dots with acrylics and added a transparency on top, I drew over the transparency with white ink to make the details stand out.

Monochromatic Women

It's going to be two years this September that I first learned about ATCs and how has time passed. I have a great collection of art including ATCs, bookmarks, chunkies, inchies, matrioshka dolls, altered houses, art dolls... and there are still lots of things I haven't even tried yet, I'm still looking forward to trading rolos, journals, and pendants!

One of the things I had not tried before either was hosting my own swap and I finally decided to give it a try, I chose "Monochromatic Women" as my theme and I was extremely lucky because an amazing group of artists joined and the art I have already received is just marvelous.


These are my first 2 cards for the swap, the red one has an image of a sunflower which I altered, some sunflower stamps and a packing tape transparency with white ink. The blue card has an acrylic background with an air mail sticker and a packing tape transparency with white ink. I still have to work on 1 more card to add 3 to the swap. I want to take pics of all the cards I get so I can share them with you :)

Vintage Experiment

Ok, I don't really do vintage; I don't have anything against it but the fact is that I use stuff that is easier to get over here, and vintage images do not fall into that category. I had this little girl in my paper stash since last year, she came to me as an extra with a trade I did and I finally put her to good use. I started with some text in the background, it has some oil pastels and acrylics on top, there is a piece of torn tissue paper on top -the paper already had the text on it- I splashed some white ink over it and added the little girl, she has some metallic acrylics on top and white ink for the details.

Rain, rain, go away...

Winter is back here, which means rain every day.
I hate when it rains in the city; traffic gets completely crazy; my commute goes from 40 minutes to an hour and a half; and the lack of sunshine really makes me feel blue. On the other hand I know rain was desperately needed all over Guatemala, drought had really affected the harvests and this is not good for any of us.

This is an ATC for a 1:1 trade at AFA. The background has tissue paper, black and white ink. The girl is an altered image from a magazine, I added gesso and painted with acrylics on top.

Mermaid Redo...

I have found out that a lot of time when I don't like a piece of art it'll get more interest than a piece I'm particularly proud of. Point in case, the mermaid fiasco I wrote about two weeks ago here...I didn't like what the end product turned out like and I decided not to include it for the Pick-a-Theme swap @ iATCs. Well, you can color me surprised when it got asked in a trade not 10 minutes after I posted...and even more surprised when after I agreed to trade it I got positive comments on it...Anyhow, it was too late to back off the trade and I had to create a new mermaid card for the PAT.

I used collaged papers, acrylics, a mermaid transparency and black and white drawing ink on this one. I'm done with the mixed media cards for the PAT, I have to work in the hand-drawn cards now.

Alice in Wonderland

Ok, it's the turn of the Mixed Media Alice in Wonderland Swap. Funny thing about Alice...it's not one of my favorite reads ever (it gets way too crazy for my taste from time to time), but I find the characters to be fascinating. I chose my 3 most favorite characters for this swap over at AFA, and here they are with a description of the mediums used.
Alice's background is made with two scrunched up pieces of tissue paper (aqua and light blue on top) since I added lots of sealer on them the wrinkles are still there as well as a mix of the colors, I added some small dots of pink glitter on top of that. The area around the card is made with a different piece of cardboard on which I added more torn/wrinkled tissue paper and added lots of acrylic paint on top. Alice was drawn on a different piece of paper and colored with different mediums, the hair has markers, prismacolor crayons, black and white ink; the face is done with prismacolor crayons, the blouse is done with blue wax crayon and the dress with a small piece of Asian paper
Now for the cat...the background is a piece of some music sheet with green, yellow, and some brown oil pastels on top; I added some gesso on top, added some clean water and wiped most of the gesso away (this way I can mute most of the oil pastels). The branches are done just like the frame around Alice; cardboard, wrinkled tissue paper and acrylics. The flowers are dried flowers we can buy over here for crafts with lots of sealer on top so they won't flake. The cat is done on a scrap of patterned paper, shaded with wax crayon and I added some details with white and black ink on top.

Finally, my favorite character, the Mad Hatter. The background is a page from an old dictionary with yellow and red circles and gesso on top, and some white ink dots to finish it. The frame is just like the previous two cards and the Mad Hatter has an embossed paper shirt with patterned paper bowtie and had and Prismacolor colored pencils for the face.

Partner Trades

I'm an ATC fan! I found an online forum on September '07 and I was hooked from the beginning, it has been an awesome experience because I've met some of the most friendly, creative, funny, and sometimes a bit crazy people around the world. I have traded and collected awesome art, made some great friends, and had the chance to learn more about art and my own process in creating it throughout this time. Last year in one of my regular hangouts, ATCs for All -AFA-, a new type of trade was set up; it's a monthly trade where you are set up blindly with another member, and you create a card especially for that member. It's a great way to trade with new people and try your hand at unusual themes. My January partner trade in AFA was Dawn (AKA Upwiththesun) and I made her a coffee ATC, it has a music sheet, way crayon, gesso, sharpie, stamps, gold pen, hand drawn image, collaged butterfly and ink.


This month a similar trade was set up in Mail Art World -MAW- and I got paired up with my dear pal Shirley (AKA Lilbad); she loves sheep, so I made a queen sheep for her! This one has scrapbooking paper, asian paper, embossed paper, hand drawn image, magazine text, sharpies, and wax crayon

Click here to see their galleries

Dawn's Gallery

Shirley's Gallery (MAW)
Shirley's Gallery (AFA)

Mom's Roses

Ok, it's time to boast a bit about my Mom, as I've told you before she has an extraordinary green thumb, but the funny thing is that whenever we visit a nursery to get more plants she acts like a child looking at baseball cards "I have this one...I don't have one in that color...Oh, I need this one" Among her favorite flowers are roses and we have quite a few of those in our terrace, unfortunately we had to get our roof fixed in December and the poor roses paid quite a high price...here are pics from few of the survivors.



I on the othe hand do NOT have a green thumb...and I'm kind of banned of anything to do with the flowers lest I'll accidentally kill them... So I consider myself to have a colorful thumb instead and stick to painting them instead of planting them. Here's my latest inspiration coming straight from my Mom's roses; it has several layers of paint, gesso, paper, ink, texture, etc and a hand drawn and painted acrylic rose on top. It measures 10"x10" and is painted on canvas board. You can find it in my Etsy store.