Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Post Cards from the Selv-edge

This months postcard offered an interesting challenge.
The front was not to bad.
The back however, was taken up by the box from a pregnancy test. One of our Post Card Members had just found out that she was pregnant and apparently wanted to share the joy.
While I am happy for her, I didn't feel that the test box added much to the back of the post card except as a space for me to add and embellish.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take a "before" picture. You can see part of the box picture in the center. The purple stick like thing. Imagine the words PREGNANCY TEST and ACCURATE ect and you get the picture. And it was attached to the left hand side of the the back. It was stitched on by three small groups of positive test symbols along the top. You can see one on the top edge.

So I cut a piece of cardboard from the box that Mira's birthday cake came in (rather fitting I thought) and glued it to the back of the test box. I then made myself a cup of Neo-Citrine and hopped into bed to do some gluing.
A number of months ago, Leigh from Homework, offered up some stamps that she had received in a duffel bag to those that wanted some. I jumped on that bandwagon very quickly and a couple of weeks later an envelope stuffed with stamps from around the world arrived in the mailbox. A lot were from Australia and there were a smattering of other places.

Our pregnant friend has often referred to herself as a gypsy so I thought that a postcard composed of stamps would be fitting for a gypsy baby. The message is a blessing of sorts. "May you tread the path of happiness May home be where you lay your head". I also left the positive symbol which you can see just above the Canada stamp with the bird on the green background.
And to the predominately butterfly front, I added two butterfly stamps to the "window".
The white that you see surrounding the postcard in the last two pictures is just the protective cardboard that it came and went in.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think that you did a wonderful job.

I didn't know that you were interested in stamps.

How many people add to the postcard after you are finished with it?
Mamoo

Anonymous said...

As a non-artist observer, I think that was the least "art worthy" postcard among all of the ones you have yet received. If that's art, then I can make art too.

Anonymous said...

I thought that 's what artists did, make something out of nothing. Artists are always challenged to express themselves and sometimes they too run on empty, like all of us.
Mamoo...

David T. Macknet said...

Me, I'm just having to recover from the double-take I did when reading the (all-caps) "PREGNANCY TEST ... ACCURATE." It just leaped out at me as I opened this post! :)

Artists do create art, not just "can." As writers write, etc. ;)

Anonymous said...

how many times have I heard that!!!

Jackie said...

Mamoo,

We are almost at the end so there are only two people left before it goes back to the person that started it.
And of course artists create art! But not everything that is "created" by an artist is "art".
And another thing to remember is that many hands have been on these postcards. 12 different people with 12 different backgrounds and training. Not to mention 12 different sensibilities about what looks "good" or "art-worthy"
As I have said before, the last few postcards have been, for me, an exercise in fixing something that bothered me. In this case, the ugliness of a bare pregnancy test. And being me, trying to do my "fixing" in a way that would not upset the person that had created the (in my mind) issue.