Tag Archives: card

Gotta Get Away?

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

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!

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

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

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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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.

Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts

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What a conveniently placed rock!

This card is from my stepdaughter’s birthday a couple weeks ago, before the end of the civilization as we know it. It’s fanart from a newish Netflix cartoon called Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, about a post-apocalyptic Earth where most of humanity lives in underground burrows because the surface is rules by mutant animals. If you are trapped in your own home and enjoy that sort of thing, I highly recommend it.

Peach Love

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Hints of Eric Carle in this peach

I’m not really allowed to discuss what this card means just yet. Perhaps I can come back later and elaborate. But I made this delicious peach card: it’s a peach, and a heart, and a star. Tissue paper, butcher paper, matte medium, on medium card stock. I love how the colors on the peach came out. It gives me a lot of ideas for using these materials to create other cool colors and textures.

A Red Fox Card

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Happy birthday, dear Foxy…

This was a fox card, for the Fox, obviously. One thing and another, I didn’t actually see him on his birthday because he was busy with Otter stuff, and then I ended up looking at this piece all week and seeing all these little mistakes I wanted to fix, but he loved it, so it’s good, I suppose. Except for the 5000 times my terrible cat knocked it onto the floor; that part was less good.

Tissue paper, butcher paper, matte medium, on heavy cardstock.