Custom Work

Once in a while, I get a request to make a custom design. Although these requests initially cause me a lot of stress, it actually becomes quite fun once I get the process started. It gives me a chance to exercise my creativity!

I made this card above at the request of my friend Cecile. She's started to learn how to sew from her mother, and she wanted a card that illustrated this for her mother's birthday. My idea was to make an image of a girl and her mother sewing a quilt together, and to stitch "Bon anniversaire, maman!" into the quilt Cecile liked this idea, so it was full steam ahead.

I ran into a few snags along the way. I didn't like my sketch and so postponed working on the card for a few days. Then I had trouble finding good paper that would represent a quilt. (I finally found it.) I was originally going to use pink thread to stitch in the birthday greeting, but when I found a spool of orange thread, I thought that would be even better. And that was how the card started to come together! Instead of using patches, I found some origami flowers, which worked with the color scheme better, and I made the girl (Cecile) more active in sewing, as you can see. And it was done!

New cards from Emily Lin

I've been busy filling orders these last few weeks, but my mom has been cranking out some beautiful cards! This one above was inspired by my parents' trip to the Blue Ridge Mountains in the fall.

Two adorable seals frolic in the water in this card. My mom painted the backdrop of the ocean.

I Heart U on an iPad.

Year of the Dragon

Happy New Year! Today marks the start of the Year of the Dragon. As one of the legend goes, the Jade Emperor invited all the animals to participate in a big race. The Zodiac would be determined by the first twelve animals to cross the finish line. The ox, worried that he would be too slow, started to run in the middle of the night. The rat, spying the ox, decided to jump on his back (unbeknownst to him) and, in fact, as dawn broke and the ox approached the finish line, the rat jumped off his back and crossed the finish line first! It is also said that the only reason the Dragon did not finish first in the race is because he overslept - something I can definitely relate to, and which I've illustrated here.

Communal Table Cookbook

These last few weeks have been so busy that I've barely had time to cook - mostly, it's just been throwing something on the frying pan or boiling something that will be ready in 10 minutes. This week, however, I've finally been able to relax a little and get back into cooking slow, carefully-crafted meals: boeuf bourguignon, a hearty fish stew, and macaroni and cheese (hey, the recipe I use for mac and cheese is not a quick one!). So I was really happy when the announcement for this cookbook (designed by Caroline Hwang) arrived in my inbox.

I love it! It's so playful and collage-y. You can buy it here (proceeds go to benefit the Farm to School charity). Found on grain edit.

When it rains, it pours

I'm not exactly sure what inspired my recent spurt of creativity - whether it was repressed from a month of filling orders (which I love but frequently leaves me little time to create) or whether it was speaking to a shop owner who encouraged me to do more birthday, animal- and New York-themed cards - but I have created 11 new designs in the last week. The first batch was revealed in the last post, and here is the second round:



This birthday card illustrates a popular Russian birthday tradition. It's similar to the American pin the tail on the donkey and the Mexican pinata in that the birthday child is blindfolded, then led to a place where his or her gifts have been tied to a suspension rope. The child is given a pair of scissors and must try to cut off their presents while blindfolded.



Riders of the F train in Brooklyn will be familiar with this card, which is modeled off the Kentile Floors sign between Smith-9th Sts and the 4th Avenue stop. Kentile Floors made asbestos tiles, among other types of tiles, and went bankrupt in the 1980s after a number of asbestos-related lawsuits were filed against the company.



This card is a variation of my popular Heart Bubbles card, and features the same little girl blowing bubbles that spell out 'happy birthday.'



This card was intended to be a Father's Day card, and still can be used as one, but I left it blank so that it could be used for other purposes.



Mother's Day featuring a flower mother and her flower children. The color palette of the flowers is inspired by a flower clock I bought in Perugia in 2008.



This Mother's Day card is actually inspired by a photograph my boyfriend took of a mother duck and her little ducklings in Prospect Park back in July 2009.



This card is a variation on my New York Valentine card, and features the same little boy and girl sitting on a bench in Central Park. Only now, it's springtime: the grass is turning green again and the lake is thawing. If only it would happen soon enough!

It's Party Time!

Now that Valentine's Day has come and gone, I can breathe a little and create some...at least before the run-up to Easter/Graduation/Mother's Day/Father's Day.

The other day, I sat down and worked on a few birthday cards. Here are the results:



The buyer at one of my stores (and former boss and now friend) suggested a few months ago that I make a birthday version of my wedding cake collage card, which I finally got around to doing.



Another Octopus birthday card! This one is juggling the letters to wish you a happy birthday.





I call this series (the seal and the elephant) "Party Animals." :)

Happy New Year

Happy New Year! This is my most recent card, celebrating the Year of the Rabbit - which starts on February 3, 2011. Legend says that the order in which the animals passed the finish line would determine their order in the Chinese Zodiac. The rabbit finished fourth, after the tiger and before the dragon.

Birthday Fireworks

Seriously, I have the hardest time trying to think of ideas for birthday cards. I have no idea why. But I'm pretty happy with the way this one turned out!

Happy Passover

I spent the afternoon working on my first Passover card. It's based on the tradition of cleaning the house of chametz (any grain product that's already fermented or can cause fermentation) before Passover. Traditionally, it's done walking through the house with a candle, feather, and wooden spoon, which is what I've tried to depict with this card.

Still debating over whether I should write a "Happy Passover" message on the top of the card.

Sketching

A few nights ago, I thought it would be a great idea to make an Alice in Wonderland themed Easter card, namely around the encounter with the White Rabbit. The idea behind the card would be to wish the recipient an Easter filled with delightful surprises.

I sketched out a few possibilities:



As you can see, there is a reason why I work in collage. The parallelograms below Alice's feet are actually a sketch of my stand-out graduate card from a previous page - I'd cut out the bottom of the page earlier although I don't remember what for now.



(Yes, I use a regular notebook to sketch my ideas.)

And this is what I came up with:

To a Stand-out Graduate

I finished this card last night. The hardest part, conceptually, for me was trying to figure out how to write "Congratulations." I didn't want to just write it in script with a drawing pen. My boyfriend suggested I use something related to school, like writing "congratulations" on lined paper, which then led me to the idea of using a banner. Of course, the final idea was not even to make a banner with the greeting, but to cut out the words, and string them across the card as the banner itself. And there you have it!

More spring cards

I spent the night before the MPRE making this (after studying of course). It's addressed to a graduate who "stands out from the crowd." The hat is actually modeled off the design I made for my own college graduation hat, not that I'm trying to flatter myself by implying I'm a standout in any way. Actually, a lot of people in my department decorated their hats: my friend, who sat beside me, put a little bear on her hat, one guy dressed up as a pirate, and apparently there was another guy who decorated his hat in a similar way to mine. My friends, who had been trying to find me, told me about him. "That guy was really big and macho," they said, "and we thought, 'no, that can't be Michelle.'"

Anyway, the card isn't finished yet - I still need to write a "Congratulations." But just wanted to preview it here.

However, after the MPRE yesterday, I was able to finish these cards below:



The Easter Egg nest



The Russian Easter cake (kulich), which is taken to the church the night before Easter to be blessed.



The Octopus graduate, complete with a graduation cap, tassel, and lei (but no diploma! It will be mailed to him later.)

A Russian Easter

Easter egg bashing is a game Russian children play on Easter. One child stands still and holds a hardboiled egg while the other child takes another egg and smashes it against the still egg, the goal being to see which egg survives with the fewest cracks. The winner gets the opponent's egg. The children call out, "Christ is risen!" ("Khristos voskres!") when bashing the eggs together.

I've tried to illustrate this tradition in the card above, although it still strikes me as unfinished somehow. Maybe a "Happy Easter" in the white space between the children would do the trick?

The Octopus family

I just uploaded these Octopus family cards to the shop. I was feeling blocked for most of January and having a difficult time coming up with new ideas, but it looks like a weekend in the mountains cured me!

Work in progress

Here's my latest, a Valentine's train puffing out smoke in the shape of hearts. It is still a work in progress because I can't decide which color hearts to use (the lighter pink or the magenta) and I can't decide if I want the last car to be gold or orange. In this picture the orange and red cars look almost the same color but they are different. The red is much deeper and darker than it looks in the picture. And I still need to make and figure out the colors for the wheels, so don't get me started on that.

Anyway, I just thought I'd give you all a glimpse into the agonizing process. Fun stuff!

Update: It's done!

New Valentine's Cards

Girl + Boy = Love

I call this one "Crossroads of Love."

A New York Valentine

This new Valentine's card is the result of a collaboration between me and my boyfriend. I wanted an ice skating theme, maybe a couple ice skating a heart around a lake, or ice-skating the words "Happy Valentine's Day" but I thought it might be too complicated for collage to make the couple. My boyfriend thought I should make the card more New York-centric and added skyscrapers to my sketch. After I made the lake and the skyline, he suggested adding a small bench with a couple, although in his sketch, the bench was a lot smaller and closer to the lake. I decided to place the bench and the couple closer to the viewer. And, voila! A new card is born and available on Etsy.

Matthew Cusick at Pavel Zoubok

I first discovered the Pavel Zoubok Gallery on a Friday in August of 2005. My company had a summer Friday policy, which meant that we worked from 8am-6pm Monday through Thursday, and in exchange, we would get Friday afternoons off. Usually most of my Friday afternoons were spent going home and doing my laundry, but on this particular day, I decided to visit the Chelsea galleries. Pavel Zoubok was holding their "3" exhibition (images here), and for me, it was love at first sight. I was especially entranced by CK Wilde's money collages.

Although I rarely go to that area of Chelsea, I've kept Pavel Zoubok on my radar since then and check in on their exhibitions occasionally. (They focus on collage and mixed media artists.) The other day, however, when my boyfriend and I wound up in that area, I steered him into the gallery.

Their current exhibition, Matthew Cusick's "Cease to Exist", features a series of map collages and is definitely worth a trip to the no man's land that is 10th and 11th Avenues. (The above image is "Kara's Wave.") My boyfriend's criticism was that Cusick "didn't really use the contours of the maps" to create the images, but rather, he just cut sections of maps to make a new portion of the image. I, however, thought that his use of color and the selection of maps to create depth was very well done. I'm not an artist per se, but having created a number of collage cards, I know how hard it is to find the right combination of color when you're creating collages - particularly when the material is not a solid color. And I personally haven't figured out how to use color to create depth in collage pieces.

Anyway, check it out! It's definitely worth it - and it's free. :)

A Russian Tradition

The Holy Supper, which in Russian Orthodox tradition, takes place on Christmas Eve after a day of fasting, begins with the mother of the family blessing each person by drawing a cross in honey on his or her forehead. I've tried to capture this tradition in my latest card, above, although it is still a work in progress.

(On a similar and somewhat funny note, when I showed this card to my Russian boyfriend, his response was, "I didn't know there was a tradition of drawing a cross on your forehead." But to be fair, he isn't Christian. So... :))

An Octopus Valentine

Here's a romantic spin on my Octopus cards!

Hmm..the pink Octopus doesn't look as pink in this picture. She is more pink in real life. Trust me.

NB: this card will not be on sale on Etsy this year. If you are interested in it, please contact me: chelleline at yahoo dot com.