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ICAD Week Seven

Tomorrow is the last official day of the index-card-a-day challenge, I am indeed going to fall short on finishing 61 cards in 61 days.  I’m still going to finish the last few, just a few days late!  After I get the last few cards made, I will pick up were I left off on my attempts at the challenge in 2017 and 2018.  My goal is to get five cards done a week until the gaps are all filled in.

I have learned a lot by doing the ICAD challenge, and I have gotten some new ideas for art quilts.  Some of the prompts were really tough for me to complete, as I had great difficulty in coming up with an idea.  Along the way , I learned a couple of new words, tried new art supplies and learned how to (or not to) combine various art media.  In the next couple of weeks, I will feature a few individual cards and discuss the process in creating them, and show a few that have inspired me.

Here are week seven’s efforts:

The prompts were direction, pool, wabi-sabi, amethyst, turnpike, topographic and billboard.

Check back on Thursday for a quilt show announcement.

 

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ICAD Week Four

I made it through week four of the index-card-a-day challenge, but now I have fallen behind!  Here are my efforts for last week:

The prompts were: bicycle, poem, music box, rose, tinker toys, corduroy and architecture.  I am most impressed by the corduroy and architecture ones.  I’d love to stitch a pattern like I drew for the corduroy.  The architecture card was so simple, but I love the result.  I simply made photocopies of some pictures that I took of buildings along Route 66 and tore then into thin strips and assembled them on the card.  I’d like to try this with images printed on fabric and stitch them together.  Off to the sewing room I go!

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ICAD Week Three

A very quick  post to document my progress on the index-card-a-day challenge.

The prompts for the week were storm, chandelier, bench or wood, yearbook, yellow, vitrina (display case) and guitar.  I am intrigued by the way the guitar card came out.  I simply played with individual shapes from an image of an electric guitar, this is a technique I’d like to explore more someday.

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ICAD Week Two

Another successful week for me in week two of the index-card-a-day challenge:

The prompts were: goggles, macaron, sapphire, palm, tapestry, balcony and thread.  I’m not sure if “macaron” was supposed to be macaroon, the cookie, or macaroni, so that card became a combination of both, plus a new word I learned in the process.  “Macaronic,” ironically, means, “involving or characterized by a mixture of languages…”It also has an obsolete meaning of “mixed or jumbled” according to the 1962 Webster’s Dictionary that I used in the collage.

Normally, I do not advocate the destruction of a book, even to use in a piece of art work.  After all, isn’t writing a form of art?  A book, even though existing in many copies is the art of the author.  I consider the monetary and cultural value of the items that I repurpose.  In the case of this dictionary, the value was about nil, especially since the text block was ripping away from the spine and had some water damage.  In this case, better to rip it up for collage than throw it in the trash.

Check back on Friday this week, as on Thursday, I will be attending an art exhibit that I will review here.

 

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ICAD Week One

Seven days, seven little index cards, so far so good in my index-card-a-day challenge attempt!  I’ve already slipped a bit behind for this week, but I know what I want to do for the two not-yet-started cards, I will catch up.

ICAD Week One

 

On Day Seven, the prompt was “stencil,” so I played with my stencils from TSC Designs and Mayco Ceramics.

The yellow stencil is from one of the big box craft supply stores, and while the design is lovely, it has a sticky back that has been causing problems,  It sticks to everything, and the bond is stronger than a lot of the tapes I use.  It is starting to pull itself apart.  The sticky back is a great concept, makes sense to have a stencil that doesn’t slip while you are using it, but I’m concerned about the self-destruction of the stencil , and the potential damage to the artwork that I use it on.

The colors are the Tsukineko inks from TSC, applied with Fantastix fillable markers.  I like the look achieved by overlapping layers of color and shapes or lines.  I will be exploring this technique in fabric, and I already want to try quilting the resulting fabric with a different design, not trying to follow the stencil patterns.

Over the past weekend, I took an inspiring class on making felted wool flowers.  Check back on Thursday for the more on that.