Tag: index card a day

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Daily Little Things

What’s this? I’m actually getting a post out on a Thursday, shocking!  Today I want to feature a few cards from my efforts in the 2019 ICAD challenge, and introduce a possible new daily project that I am trying.  I really have enough to do in my life, but as I always say, I will NEVER be bored.

From this summer’s index-card-a-day event, here is a group that all share the same concept in carrying out the prompt:

The prompts for these four cards were pendulum, tinker toys, guitar and skee ball.  I was not at all interested in these four prompts, and with a limit of time to produce a card each day, I had to get innovative with my interpretation.  For each of these, I looked at images of the subject, then extracted shapes, lines and patterns that I noticed in the images.  I then made paper cutouts of the shapes and arranged them in compositions that still had the elements of the object, but mixed them up in a new way.  These cards ended up being a lot of fun to work on once I tricked my brain into not seeing a guitar as a guitar, but a series of shapes to play with.  By the way, the guitar card is the only one that I drew the shapes with markers; I did not use my usual paper cut out collage technique on that one.

Earlier in the week, I received the current issue of Quilting Arts magazine.  One of the articles is a short introduction by Liz Kettle to daily meditative hand stitching.  It is another affirmation that if you want to be more creative, you have to make things every day, and build your skills.  One of the tips that Kettle gives in the article is to never remove a stitch in you daily stitch pieces – just keep going.  I absolutely agree with this!  If I keep redoing all the stitches that don’t turn out like I want, I’ll never finish anything, and I have enough trouble finishing things.  I have finished three 4×4″ squares, here they are:

I don’t know if I will keep this up daily, with so many other creative things I have in progress, but I have a goal of five of these little stitchies each week.  They are a great way to warm-up before working on a bigger project, and to play with design and composition.

Next week, more about the ICAD cards (I really love them!) and whatever I have stitched over the weekend.

 

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ICAD 2019, Card #47 – Turnpike

Just a quick post today.  I want to feature a few individual cards that I made from the 2019 ICAD challenge and the technique or inspiration behind them.  Up first is the card from day 47, the prompt “turnpike.”  I have an unexplained fascination with outrageous 1950s cars.  I’m not a gearhead at all, my interest is in the exterior design – the bigger the fins on the taillights, the better!  One of my favorite 1950s cars is the 1958 Mercury Turnpike Cruiser, so I naturally thought of this car when deciding what to do with the prompt.

 

My process for the card used a photo that I took of the taillight of a ’58 Turnpike Cruiser (above left).  I made a black and white copy of my image, using the photo setting on the copier and lightening the copy (center image).  Then, I simply tinted the copy with colored pencils (right image).  I think that the tinted copy looks better than the original photo.  Many antique postcards were colored with a similar technique, and hand tinting black and white photos continues to be at technique  occasionally used by photographers today.  I’d like to try the technique on an image printed on fabric.  Colored pencils apply nicely to fabric, I recommend brushing a textile medium over any areas drawn on with pencils.

Next time, another ICAD card feature, and some stitching.

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Last Days of the ICAD Challenge

Late again, thanks to quilt show preparations.  Here are my last few cards from the index-card-a-day challenge:

The prompts were: kite, lime green, skee ball, accordion and symphony.  Here are a couple of individual views of my accordion card:

Since I have a strong interest in art book making, I opted to make a couple of quick accordion fold “books” that I covered in bits of leftovers from this and other projects.  Being a librarian/archivist by education, I would love to explore the book as an art form – writing, illustrating and binding one-of-a-kind volumes that are completely my own creation, no altered books here!

Next week: some more discussion of individual cards from ICAD, wrap-up of the Athens, Ohio Quilt Fest, and will I get a Thursday post out on time?

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ICAD Week 8

I just realized that I did not finish posting here about my participation in the 2019 index-card-a-day challenge.  The good news is, yes, I made an index card for all 61 prompts!  I’ll admit, I did not finish everything by July 31, the official end of the challenge, and of course I am even later in posting about it!  Here are the cards from week 8:

The prompts were: escape, number, friendship, note to self, shadow, pendulum and spin.  I will post the final five cards from the challenge on Thursday, and I want to take an in-depth look at a few individual cards in the next few weeks.  My next goal is to make the cards that I did not complete from the last two years of the challenge, at a leisurely pace.  I need to make my art quilts a priority now, along with another long neglected daily creative project.

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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.