I've been making postcards. First, a bunch of Christmas postcards to add to family gifts. They're all nearly identical - a tree on the front with some decorations and the words Merry Christmas 2005 on the back and a hanger.
Next, I'm working on getting some inspiration by making small versions of pictures that I can hopefully translate into something larger. The original image is a picture I took in Antelope Canyon, Utah while on vacation. Antelope Canyon is a slot canyon about 1/4 mile long. It's been carved by flood waters careening down the washes and can be deadly if you're inside when the waters come. The walls are about 50 feet high and never more than about 20 feet apart. At midday when the sun is overhead there are marvelous opportunities for pictures with shafts of sunlight coming down and hitting the floor. We took several hundred pictures, digital is wonderful. I took a few of those images and played around in Photoshop, trying out various filters. I wanted to translate the image into areas of light and dark, not being concerned with the actual picture.
This is the manipulated image.
This is my postcard, first attempt. I used stitching to try to soften the edges between the color blocks.
I need to work on this some more, I think. I have a bunch of other canyon pictures that I have blurred in the same fashion, so there's a lot to play around with.
Five more things about me:
5. I hate touching cold, wet lettuce. But from the popularity of those prewashed, pretorn bags of lettuce at the grocery store, apparently I am not the only one who feels that way.
6. I used to be a runner but after 25,000 miles (I kept track, how compulsive is that) my knees couldn't take it anymore and I had to give it up. Then I tried walking, and eventually my knees protested that also. Now I belong to a gym and work out on an elliptical trainer. So far no problems. I hope I'm not reduced to swimming. Not that I don't like swimming - it's that first shock of getting in the water that stops me.
7. Someday I want to go to Africa, in particular to the Ngorongoro Crater to take pictures of all the animals and scenery.
8. My husband says that he sometimes sees his father when he looks in the mirror these days. I don't yet see my mother in my mirror, but I hear her sometimes when I am talking.
9. When I look at my children I sometimes wonder if they turned out the way they have because of me or inspite of me. I know there are alot of things I would do differently now.
10. I paint and dye all my fabric nowadays. I can't remember the last time I bought commercial fabric. But I still have at least a dozen large boxes of commercial fabric stored in the fabric annex (aka my daughter's old room) and I raid these boxes for quilt backs and baby quilts. I don't seem to be making a dent in them at all. I even went through all the boxes last year and pulled out all the small pieces and gave them away. I gave away several large bags but it only reduced my box count by 3.
