New work

Now that the wholesale rush has slowed down, I have time to make new things again. This Rumpelstiltskin card was made at the request of a friend of mine. It was fairly easy to pick which scene to illustrate - Rumpelstiltskin spinning the straw into gold - but the more difficult parts came in deciding the color scheme. I also had to figure out how a spinning wheel worked - and what it looked like - in order to portray it accurately here. It was a lot of fun!

In 2009, my husband bought me a wooden giraffe from the Ukraine. It's painted blue and orange and it can move when you press the bottom of its stand. I loved it and since then had been wanting to make a giraffe card. I had trouble conceptualizing ideas for giraffes, though - until now! The idea behind this card is "Thanks a bunch!" with the taller giraffe helping the smaller one by grabbing onto a branch ("bunch" of leaves) that the smaller one can't reach.

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.

We're off to see the Wizard

Here, Dorothy, Toto, Shaggy Man, and Button Bright are about to meet a new friend on their journey through Oz: Polychrome, the daughter of the rainbow. This scene is from "The Road to Oz."

At my boyfriend's suggestion, I've made the image on two cards, so to give the customer visual delight at "putting the pieces of the puzzle together."

Fall Collection: Fairy tales, octopi and Baikal

Now that I've been able to get blogger's image uploading device to work, here are the rest of my new cards:



This card depicts the Chinese folktale of the famous archer Houyi and Chang'e, his wife. Rewarded with a pill for eternal life for his heroic feats (namely, shooting down nine of the ten suns that were scorching the earth), Chang'e accidentally swallows the pill one day and flies up to the moon. She then commands the Jade Rabbit on the moon to make a new pill for her so that she can be reunited with her husband. Legend says that the Jade Rabbit, to this day, is still pounding the herbs for the pill. Available here.



My second Baikal-inspired card. I call this "Love is color-blind." The seals depicted are a harbor seal (brown) and a Baikal Nerpa seal (white). Available here.



This is another Octopus Love card, and it was a rejected sketch from my customer back in July. However, I do like the idea, so I made this Octopus card. Available here.



This card is an illustration of a Swedish folktale I read when I was young, about a girl who outwits a giant. Story can be found here.

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:

East of the Sun, West of the Moon

My latest creation, based on the Norwegian fairy tale "East of the Sun, West of the Moon."

We're off to see the Wizard

I call this card "Poppy Dreams." I was inspired from watching the Wizard of Oz movie over Thanksgiving. It only took me a mere two months to put this inspiration to work. (nb: this is a long time in the craft world) Here, I've combined elements from the book and movie: the field of poppies and the silver shoes (since the book was a critique of the gold standard).

The Swan Geese

I immediately fell in love with "The Swan Geese" when I read it in college. It's a Russian fairytale. You can read a summary here. (The version I read, however, had a river with banks of custard, instead of a river with milk.) I loved this fairytale because not only did it have absolutely nothing to do with romance (it was an "anti-love" time for me) but also because the heroine learned--she grew during the course of the story. She was a dynamic character, not a static one.

One of my goals in the New Year is to add more variety to my shop. I am planning to include bookmarks and art pieces. I am happy to give you a preview of my first collage art piece, based on my beloved fairytale The Swan Geese.