Tag Archives: card

A Bombshell Mousie Birthday Card

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I went to a birthday party for the Coyote’s mom who turned 97! She was a famous beauty (literally) in the 20th century and she also was known for drawing little mousies, so I tried to draw this bombshell mouse in her style. Big hair, little red dress, and a champagne toast

I’m partially satisfied with my success. It was a busy week and I didn’t feel well and it was left to the last minute and I guess I fell asleep before i finished and had to color it in the car on the way to Phoenix. So possibly could have been better. But she loved it. I also gave her a snowflake, one of the best ones I’ve cut since my snowflake workshop.

I gave the rest of the snowflakes to the librarian.

Attempted Guitars

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Usually, things come together for me. Occasionally they don’t. Sometimes I give up.

i spent 2 days trying to make nephling number 3 a 3-dimensional card with an electric guitar with real strings but I couldn’t find a satisfactory way to attach the strings and after the 7th time they fell out I gave up and drew a 2-dimensional electric guitar, which I am also not happy with. But camp is only 2 weeks long and if I didn’t actually mail them something they wouldn’t actually receive it.

So this is something I made that never aligned with my vision and I had to just accept it as it was and call it finished. And that was the whole “giving up on perfection” part of my artistic process that allowed me to create all the stuff in this blog. Sometimes you have to call it “done” or “good enough” even if you don’t feel like it is.

I started a big (like 2′ x 4′) painting but it will probably be some time before that’s finished. I’m working on a nonfiction book, a sort of biography about the Coyote’s life. It’s a very interesting life. I mostly know the whole story by heart because GOLLY does that guy like to talk and if he can’t think of something new to say he just returns to his greatest hits. Fortunately, it’s a very interesting life. Most of the book is about the parts I was in, but he was 55 already when I met him.

There’s this other thing I want to share here, about my relationship to art, but perhaps that’s another post.

A Sweet Little Elephant

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I recently visited my mother-in-law in her new home and I noticed she had a bunch of elephant pictures on the wall and I was like, “I didn’t know you liked elephants.” (I mean seriously, I have known her for 15+ years; I had no idea she loved elephants. I feel unobservant.)

Like all humans from the great state of Kansas, she also likes sunflowers. I’m pretty sure they don’t even let you rent an apartment in Kansas if you don’t like sunflowers.

Anyway, I had to send her an elephant. The background is watercolor. The elephant is specialty paper. I made the sunflower by cutting petal shapes out of a picture of some other yellow flowers in a magazine.

Gotta Get Away?

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Some people are islands, not in the sense that they stand completely alone, unaffected by anyone around them (that’s not even a apt metaphor; islands are obviously impacted by the weather, the water, geothermal activity, and climate change) but in the sense that they offer safety and security in otherwise inhospitable situations. If you’ve been treading water for so long you can’t keep your head up for another moment and are in danger of going under for good, an island is exactly what you need to survive.

She Tortoise Well

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All’s shell that ends shell

My mom was recently admiring my fishy switch plate so I thought I’d make her something in a similar style for a birthday card, but I decided on a turtle, because she also likes those little folksy Mexican bobble head turtle things. I don’t know what they’re called.

The turtle’s body is cut from a single image of a hibiscus and the shell is an ad for fiber or something like that. I love how hexagons tesselate, even though these ones are imperfect.

I brought this card to the library, where my parents were presenting a science program about electricity for little kids on my mom’s birthday, because that is how my parents roll.

Happy Birthday, V!

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Flyyyyyy me to the moon…

It’s my dear friend, the Vampire Bat’s, birthday, and I made her this card to amuse her. The background is layered tissue paper, the bat is brown butcher paper, and the starts are holographic foil, but the holographic part didn’t really seem visible once I started cutting. O well. I went back and forth over whether the bat should be black or brown and probably black would be better but it’s already in the mail so that’s that. Hopefully it reaches its destination before my friend’s birthday.

Pretty often I forget people’s birthdays entirely so sending a card 5 days in advance is pretty good.

Card for a New Baby

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This font is awesome and I forgot what it is.

Well, the new baby is like 8 months old now, but I made this little card when he was newer. Baby Amiel will be bilingual—his mother is American and his father is Spanish—so I wanted to make the card bilingual too. A is for alligator and apple in English, and árbol and abeja and amor in Español. Also, Amiel’s middle name is Willow so that tree is doing double duty.

Three Saguaros: Father’s Day in the Desert

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The real desert shinier and pricklier.

Wow, it’s been so long since I’ve posted something here that WordPress actually logged me out of the site. That never happens.

I have made some art, but most of it was for a book that hasn’t been published yet and the editors asked me not to share it yet. But also, the world is on fire (here in Arizona literally, and figuratively everywhere else) and it’s hard to focus. I’ve been reading a lot.

This card is for my father, who loves cactus, for Father’s Day. By the time this page is published, I’ll have given it to him in a socially distant way. Happy Father’s Day, Dad!

Spinning My Wheels

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Screen Shot 2020-03-31 at 3.17.45 PM

Right about now I wouldn’t mind pricking my finger and sleeping for 100 years.

Another card. For some reason, I had the worst trouble getting the colors to photograph properly. This version is close but still not precisely how it’s meant to look (should be brighter). Anyway, I made this card for a nurse who likes to spin and likes the color chartreuse. That’s the whole story.

Sadly, I am not, as of yet, one of those people who has used the pandemic to inspire a vast body of new work. I did some crayon drawing last night that amused me but nothing super internet-ready. Not only is this stupid virus wrecking my social life, it’s also making my daily life extra difficult because I just bought a new house and moving in has become ridiculously complicated. Like, I ordered a refrigerator off the internet, and was just informed that they’re going to deliver it Friday, but they can’t bring it in the house or install it. They’re going to leave the refrigerator in the yard.

If you do not know, I am very small for a human. If I were much smaller, I would be anomalously small. Nobody would look at me and think, “That person could move a refrigerator.”

This week I’ll be sequestering myself away to start Bonnie Jo Campbell Comics volume 4 but I won’t be able to share any of it on this blog because this one will be published in a larger volume of (text based) literary criticism. It’s kind of exciting, except that I won’t make any money off this one. I will likely be the only person in the anthology who doesn’t have a PhD in literature and doesn’t teach it at the university level and doesn’t need to publish in order to maintain my academic credentials. Everything’s different for academics. But I really wanted to be in this book! And it’s flattering that they asked me. So I’m doing it.

After I do that, I’ll really have to start thinking about how I can use my skills and talents to support myself.