Postcards from the edge

 I was delighted at the end of last year when Fiona asked if I'd like to join her and 4 of her  friends in a postcard print exchange for 2017. I jumped at the chance for sharing ideas and the parameters were straightforward:- send four postcards to everyone else on the list, once every three months, in a pre-determined size and picking from a list of print techniques to realise them in.

 All postcards had to respond to the changing seasons so January's offering was Summer....
now I know it's not summer here but it is in the southern hemisphere and I did not want to be out of kilter so I did my summer postcards in December for January posting and I am currently contemplating a collagraph for autumn to be posted in early April.

 I chose to do a monoprint based on a Barbara Kingsolver quote from the book 'Prodigal Summer' and I sat back to wait for mine to arrive. Susan's came first followed by Kim, Andrina, Fiona and Steph. Poor Stephanie's took 2 months to reach me and we'd almost given up hope of getting a full set and then it just appeared last week. So, now I had 6 including my own and wanted to find a way to keep them all together. As I always slip in default mode and make a book I cracked on with an idea today.

 I made a mock up of a double folded accordion book and made pockets to slide each postcard into. I thought cutting a letter out of the front would show a peep of the postcard and make it relevant as all the seasons have 6 characters so I could make a full set by the end of the exchange.

 Then I just cut off one of the flaps and turned it on itself to neaten the front. I was thinking of adding covers but I used quite thick paper for this exercise and just drawing or printing something on the front may be enough. I am well aware that my cutting is wonky but I did not plan it too closely. I made it just to see if it would do the job and I think it will although I need to re-think the right typeface to use. I also know that summer has two 'm's' but Blogger won't upload the second photo for some reason which was housing Susan's postcard. I love technology!!

 That last statement is of course only partly true.......

 I went up to Bristol yesterday to do some screen printing and had a mock up of all these beetles from either my drawings or my photos from the Natural History Museum in Oxford. I cut them out and stuck them all on a circular piece of paper because I have been looking at making toroidal books recently. Simon, who was running the workshop said I work in a very analogue way because most people would have scanned all the drawings in and moved them around in Photoshop. Well, I use Photoshop a lot but like to have my hand in things and quite enjoy messing about with scale on the photocopier and superimposing images on top of one another.

 With the circular book in mind I bought these old sheets which I think might be from a tachograph or something similar and I printed by beetle ring onto them for a bit of experimentation. I might use them individually or stick and cut them back to back before making the book. I shall reveal all when I decide.

In my 'analogue' way I had produced some imagery for the 'winter' postcard for the exchange already. As we're in the middle of these freezing temperatures it is a season uppermost in my thoughts! Simon altered it in Photoshop to get it onto acetate and I gaily printed 8 versions to get 6 good ones but I have noticed today that they are too small! He may have changed my original or I made an error up front. Who knows?
The long and short of it is that I have my postcards for July already but not only are they the wrong size, I have realised today that screenprinting is not one of the disciplines on the list. Drat and curses.
I'm not showing them here just in case..... but if I have a surfeit of winter themed postcards to get rid of.... anyone want something sent from Wales?