Postcard #9 - Painted Lace & Twigs

OMG! Is it just me or is time ticking away a lot quicker than usual.  I had hoped to get all of my postcards mailed out by now but I'm not quite finished.

I can't believe how late I woke up this afternoon!  Why is it that when I am working and need to sleep I can't?  Why is it that when I don't need or want to sleep in, I do??!!  I think I got to get off the sleep deprivation shift work roller coaster sooner rather than later.

Okay....this picture shows how I was "thinking" I might put this postcard together.  I had painted two different types of lace ribbon that I found at a charity shop.  I had "made" quite a few thread wrapped twig "buttons" and had arranged them on the card.

As you can see this is not what actually ended up happening.  I thread wrapped another twig (yup debris from the maple trees that fell on my deck) in a variegated thread.  I had ironed some pleats in the transparent turquoise coloured organza and then beaded that down with monochromatic coloured glass beads.  I finally did use the embroidery floss above but not until the end.

I like leaving the frayed salvage edge on the fabric piece and I didn't finish off the edges of the pleated piece either.  The thing I had difficulty with is applying the twig button embellishments.  They were not as easy as I had originally thought.  I'm just glad that I was able to save this postcard from the garbage but at first I had thought that I had really made a dud.

I applied the fabric to the postcard using matte gel medium.

As you can see my "design" was not well planned in advance....I had a notion of what I wanted but the final design just sort of happened.  I wanted the embroidery floss to be in the card and had not really factored that in.  

I hadn't really thought about it much other than I wanted turquoise and orange and it took me a while to see the boat and sky with clouds that this card finally became.  I had wanted to keep everything in balance; the "sky" is one third and the water is 2 thirds of the card.  My "boat" takes up half the card and it meets edge to edge so I think there is a balance there as well.   If I was to do this again, I think I would add more turquoise beads to depict the ripples in the water.  Of course, I didn't think of that until I had already finished off the card. 

I think now that I might like to make another one but use a creamier orange colour and just dull it down a bit.  I think I have some lighter coloured orange thread around is my old sewing box that might be the ticket.

Again I applied acrylic paint to the metal foil finishing tape to dull down the shiny gold surface.  I do quite like the abstract nature of this postcard and was happy to see that it "finished up" quite well.

For this card I used:

- Strathmore watercolour postcard
- acrylic paint
- paint dyed lace ribbon
- organza
-glass beads
- embroidery floss
- thread
- wood twig "button" embellishments
- metal foil

I think that is it!  Very pleased