POSTCARD CHALLENGE WEEK 4 ~CHINA

Well this posting is later than I wanted, but due to family health issues I was unable to work on the card until Saturday. I was so tickled to hear Darcy picked China as the next country ,but then again the possibilities were endless. So this left me with a tougher decision -Where should my story character  go in China? How do I take  my postcard to a new level?-How do I challenge myself to do something different? So after many debates(and a good meal at PF Chang's), I found my answer... Do a letter instead of a postcard (besides I have so many layers to my characters to tell you about and a postcard just isn't  big enough) Thanks to PF Chang's I had the perfect postcard sized envelope to use.

This envelope was be given out for a coupon  promotion, celebrating year of the dragon(perfect timing I think)-There is alot of stamping on the back using Chinese script and bamboo as well-

This is the letter inside written to "Alex"as follows:

"Alex, Well I see you're finally telling me your first name-how nice, but I tell you I still do not remember "our Night" in Vienna.

Apparently a few things are blurry from that night , therefore on the advice of my family & friends , I decided to go to China, and seek 'healing'. As you may know China has many great traditional medical care;such as wonderful teas, herbs and natural chemicals. I'm doing a new therapy through the Performing Arts. I hope by dancing, singing, painting and playing a musical instrument I can gain my memory back. Maybe you are not aware of it, but music is the center part of character for medicine and can enhance my concentration.

I shall be staying at the Dragonfly Therapeutic Center in Suzhou, China until further notice.

Melite."

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WHERE AM I PUTTING MY POSTCARDS??

Since I'm doing this challenge I have been thinking of a way to keep  my cards in order and how do I supplement my  storyline at the same time. I have seen many postings on books everyone made to store the cards in - But nothing struck me as to how I wanted to do mine...Until I was at the Office Depot and it hit me--Use page protectors , cut them down to size and hook them onto the pages several different ways. SO I decided on a book format (This may get very thick ,but it is a story), which means I can just add more signatures as I need them. These pages would allow me to tell more of the story and add more art to my "book"-ENJOY the start...

                                                            CHINA

                                                    SPAIN (pc down)  

                                                    SPAIN (pc up)

                                                    AUSTRIA(pc down)

                                                    AUSTRIA (pc up)

                                              BRAZIL to be  share at a later date.

So  as you can see I now have a home for my postcards and a way to share more of the story line. Until next week -
                                              Happy Creating,
                                              Fotojoy/Joyce
          

Postcard Challenge Week 3~BRAZIL

This week's  adventure/mystery continues. Melite has sent a card to A.I.G.  telling him she does not remember meeting 'him' in Austria.  A.I.G. responds back to Melite that  he is unsure way she does not remember their 'private tour' in the museum in Austria. He is now in BRAZIL -actually in the Pantanal region ;the world largest freshwater wetlands, which is 10 times larger than the Everglades and is home to over 700 species of birds-thus this lead to my topic ~a beautiful Macaw.
  

 The front of the postcard was done on watercolor paper in rich tones of green to represent the canopy of the rain forest. The branch was stamped on and then several leaves were over stamped. The beautiful Macaw was hand drawn , water colored ;and then hand cut feather were  individually glued on top of the outline . Facial features were  done with markers and white marker. I Love how it turned out!!

The Backside

 Correspondence as follows:

Melite,

I received your postcard from Spain. Wonder why you do not remember our time in Austria? We seemed to connect when we did the private tour ... Not sure why you have so many questions- I hope your memory returns quickly...

I'm in the Pantanal region in Brazil (the sights are amazing). Attending an ecotourism seminar. I'm thinking about having my board members support the DC-NGO conservation group.

Happy Memories Soon!

Alex

So until next week another piece of the mystery is revealed ...    

ARTIST of the WEEK...

First of All I would like  to Thank All of my great ARTISTIC FRIENDS that have greatly influenced my life these last few years.

        " LAUREL from NJ"

This last weekend I had the great Honour of being named   the "ARTIST of the WEEK" by a very well known You Tube artist called Scotia9338  aka Laurel(http://www.youtube.com/user/scotia9338) . Laurel has posted well over 170 You Tube videos, as well  she does  weekly U-stream classes(http://www.ustream.tv/channel/laurelfromnj), maintains a blog (http://paperandscissorsrock-laurel.blogspot.com/), is a member of the Lindy Stamp Design team, and she works full time. How she finds the time do to all this is simply Amazing!

 I have always dreamt of making friends that share my Love of the multi- faceted world of art! It has been a honor  to personally meet a few of these talented artists in the last year (our shopping trip/s will be long remembered!). Mostly I  must say the 'artist community ' has truly blessed me by sharing their wonderful talent on blogs, You Tube , U-stream and other online classes. It has been a long process for me to realize I am an ARTIST - Because of the support of   my new 'Art  Friends'  I have started  to share my art endeavors ~ so check back frequently to see what's new in my
                                            "Arty  Delightful World".

So the bottom of my Heart ~Thank You Laurel and the art community  for supporting 'My Love' of  art.

                                    Joyce aka Fotojoy

A Little Weekend Arting

So while waiting for the next Darcy Postcard Challenge location to be announced - I decided to keep my creative  juices flowing. Last weekend I had dug out my watercolors for my postcard; so I felt inspired  to do some more watercolors. The Midwest has been extremely cold lately  and I needed to be warmed up.  I thought of two happy things I like to see in the summer - flowers & hummingbirds . Which resulted in  this colorful little guy ( by the way it's still cold here!) and I must say I think he is adorable.

                   P.S. he started out as a stencil-Remember art is all around us
                                    ~Just look for it!

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Once I finished the watercolor from above I ventured into a new medium for me -the world of ATC's- Recently I have received a few of these and found the scale to be intriguing. I usually work in a much larger scale (tags and journal sized mostly), so one that is always looking for a challenge; I jumped straight into the pot and made a couple ATC's
                                    I think I may be hooked on these...

                        Hope everyone Had a great weekend creating!!

                                               Fotojoy / aka Joyce
                                  
                 

Postcard Challenge Week 2 ~SPAIN

So the adventures continues in the Postcard Challenge. This week Darcy's prompt was the country SPAIN. What a good choice, beautiful country,many things to write about , interesting language and a vivid art culture is very alive in Spain.

So let's pick up from last week's start of the story. First  of all A.I.G. has sent a postcard to Melite Ikakia from Vienna, Austria to her home in Peloponnese ; thanking "Her" for making the fund raiser gala at the Kunst Historsches Museum enjoyable. So who is A.I.G. ? Who is Melite Ikakia? These are questions that will be solved as the correspondence continues. But in order for the story to continue Melite must find out who A.I.G. is so she sends a letter to the GrandHotel Wein in Vienna, Austria  to obtain A.I.G.'s address.(this is where the postmark was from on the first postcard, she was a guest there for the fund raiser gala as well). After several months the Concierge from the Grand  Hotel ,responds  back that a guest know as A.I.G. did stay there;and he   fowards Melite that address.

 

FRONT OF POSTCARD

                          [this is a watercolor picture  I did of the Cantabria coastline in Spain]                                                       

                                                   

Melite has now gone on 'Holiday ' to  Cantabria, Spain to do some research for her business, see the country side and of course do some artwork. Melites decides  she will send a postcard back to A.I.G. while she is in Spain reguesting ,"He" reveal his name to her,  how they met , how "He" obtained her name, and address etc.

BACK OF POSTCARD

Another piece of the plot is revealed . A.I. G. lives in Sepaqvilla, SV- Um wonder what part of the world that is located  in....

 So the story continues.....

Week 1 of Postcard challenge ~Austria

So here's how the postcard challenge works as  Darcy posted the following instructions:
- Step one ...create 2 characters, and 2 addresses.
whatever you want. the address can be anywhere in the world as long as they are fictitious. All you need to start with is a name for each person and an address for each person
Step two... cut out 52 postcards. You can use whatever you want, plain card, textured card, patterned card, watercolour paper...whatever you want, as long as they are 6inches x 4 inches.
If you wish to join in every week you will need 52, you may only want to join in fortnightly, or even monthly in which case you need less cards.
Step three...make or buy a book. you need enough pages for all your cards, depending on how often you are joining in.
Step four...decide how you will attach the cards into the book, you must be able to take them out..so you could use a pocket on each page...an envelope...or bought/hand made photo corners...

So on every Monday she posts a name of a country from which the postcard/correspondence is to originate from . 
This was the exciting part of the challenge ;developing the characters names and how they met to start the mailings back and forth.
As times goes on I will reveal more of the characters information , such as name, where they meet, what they do for living etc. This adventure will be Fun for all.

WEEK ONE :  AUSTRIA

 So I thought okay; Austria- what do I  know about this beautiful country. Plenty of art , museums and of course Music.  But with my two characters I developed , this seemed to be a  Huge Mountain to climb over~ how could they meet, where could they hook up at etc... It took me until mid week to come up with my idea on how these 2 characters would meet in Austria---> A fund raiser Gala in Vienna, at the Kunsthistorides Museum Giuseppe Exhibit. This was all I needed- I was off to the races to develop my first postcard.Enjoy the start of the adventure!!

This is the front of the postcard-which is a copy of the famous Giuseppe Archimbold mixed media artwork at the museum. Giuseppe loved to use unusual  objects to make his artwork such as fruit, vegetables and pieces of found items like wood, twigs and keys. The background has multi layers of distress inks then over stamped in script writing, maps and textures to give it the distressed look.

Back of postcard

This is being sent to Melite Ikakia of the tiny island of Peloponnese after the fundraising event in Vienna. Of course the character sending the card is only know as A.I.G. and 'he' is thanking Melite for making the Gala more enjoyable...

More to follow next week.

Fotojoy /joyce

Darcy's Post Card Challenge 2012

In the last year I have made some wonderful ART friends through several arenas, such as blogs, you tube videos , and ustream. I have hosted several swaps and joined several challenges; but this past December a challenge went out that I could not ignore. There is this wonderful artist from the UK Darcy W. who has put out a 52 week challenge to join a Post card challenged based on my favorite Mixed Media artist named Nick Bantock. Nick has written several books; including the Giffin & Sabine trilogy. The premise behind the books is that Giffin& Sabine correspond back and forth for several years , by either postcards or letters. Many of the letters/postcards are sent from 'fanasty worlds' and are colleagued pieces of work. Nick actually had a complete line of stationary, cards, rubber stamp images and ink pads produced  to match his artwork in these books(of coarse I had several of these products).So when Darcy posted this challenge I had to join. The challenge is a weekly prompt of a country from where the postcard will be sent from . So check back weekly to see my postings on this challenge.
Fotojoy/joyce

Why Make A Blog ??

Well with much Encouragement from friends I have decided to start a blog to share some of my art projects. I have always been 'late to get on the band wagon' so this was one of my New Year's challenges- To blog and share more about my world of likes, dislikes and interest in art. This blog (hopefully) will be updated about what is going on in my world of "expression" though either my artwork , friends work and may include my taste in music performers, favorites songs, a good book to read. great recipe to share, where to find a good bargain and whatever else I may want to share. So you never know what Delightful thing I may post.