the last ICAD round-up

of 2019 that is. because as incredible as it seems to me, our 61 days of index cards are over already? i swear the summers fly by faster every year! meanwhile, here are the last few cards:

day fifty six: off prompt

a collage that has even more layers than you think. layers of map and index fragments, a stencilled layer, layers of rub-on transfers... all topped off with an aloha lady!

day fifty seven: off prompt

i had this idea -rainbow stripes on a blank library card, with doodles on top- at the very beginning of ICAD and sort of forgot all about it. until now.

day fifty eight: lime green

the most random collage i've ever made. sometimes the goofy ones turn out to be my favorites... but honestly, i'm not in love with this one. which is fine.

day fifty nine: mandala monday

the last mandala monday of icad called for my favorite shades of colorburst, loads of doodles and a nice smattering of white pen on top.

day sixty: accordion

ok, technically the closest this gets to accordion is POLKA dots, which actually isn't very close at all, lol. another cut up, reassembled and stitched colorburst leftover. this time with paint pen doodles on top. 

day sixty one: THANK YOU!

hand cut patterned paper letters, brush pen shadows and a few little collage elements. just to say THANK YOU to tammy garcia for devising and hosting another wonderful 61 day event, and THANK YOU to everyone who cheered us on!

♥♥♥

TA-DAAAAAA!

my finished book, stuffed with 61 days worth of ideas, essperiments and FUN!

♥♥♥

and this concludes our index card extravaganza... until june 1, 2020 that is!

lots of collage...

...in this week's batch of cards for ICAD2019. hard to believe this is the last full week of july AND the last full week of index card art. where does the time go, eh?

day fifty: off prompt

inspired by... SOCKS? well, yeah, actually. someone sent me the photo below; and of course i can NEVER resist a diabolical pun, lol! 

day fifty one: number

somewhat tangential to the prompt, though all of the papers in my background collage have numerals on them. why is there a hummingbird?? ummm... it kinda fit and the colors kinda matched... :)

day fifty two: mandala monday

the fact that i see serious flaws in my mandala (just tiny things like scale and placement lol!) does not interfere in any way with the fact that this instantly became one of my fave ICADs everrrrr!

day fifty three: note to self
in this case, the note to self was, when you don't love what you've made, there is NO downside to experimenting! chop your work into pieces, re-assemble the bits, maybe add 21 or so staples...?! :)

day fifty four: off prompt
a collage version of mondrian's broadway boogie woogie... set further downtown... somewhere around canal street, apparently... :)

day fifty five: off prompt
another case of finishing something and deciding i didn't like it. so i carefully cut nearly all the doodles from the original vintage library card (neatening up the edges and curves a bit as i went) and mounted them on foam tape on a second card. i'm honestly not sure why that was enough of a difference for me to like it again, but it was, lol, so i went with it!

♥♥♥

i'll be back on thursday with the last few ICAD's and a bit of a wrap up!

now even ICADier!

i'm still plugging away at an index card a day. is it just my imagination, or does summer fly by a little bit faster each year?

day thirty six: thesaurus

as you may have guessed from the rainbow assortment of michelle ward's exclusive ink pad stencils, this was a day of gel printing! and the base paper of lady liberty actual is a page from a thesaurus, so i did start out with the prompt in my head; but clearly the collage took a much more new-york-y turn midway through, and i was fine with that.

(and NO, once they are dry, as long as the crud that is on my stencils is stable and won't contaminate the next project, i never clean my stencils! julie balzer doesn't either and says life is too short SO THERE!!!)

day thirty seven: botanical

a very simple collage. that i actually really like.

day thirty eight: mandala monday

i've done lots of mandala icads and plenty of tiny car icads, but (somewhat incredibly... how is this possible...?!) i had never done a tiny car mandala icad. until now. 

(vroom! vroom!)

day thirty nine: color chart

this idea is 100% a lift of something i saw on gill corrigan's instagram account, rowans cottage. except hers was painted ON A WALL in her house!!! i'm not as brave as that. on the other hand, you can't add machine stitching to a wall...

day forty: blueprint

i started with a much more sensible idea, honestly! and somehow it became appliqued and stitched lattice on a gridded card with every shade of blue stripes inside the raised areas. yeah... i have no idea, either...

day forty one: off prompt

a random collage of wavy papers, stitching and a tiny car. 

(vroom vroom!)

day forty two: card catalog

circling back to the  prompt i skipped yesterday. layered ex-library catalog cards, adorned with narwhals and mermaids from this month's pipsticks pack; and a blendy ocean-ish colorburst mat in between.  

♥♥♥

hope this weekend will find you with a little extra time to have some artsy FUN!

♥♥♥

cavalcade of ICADs

because there's nothing more refreshing on a hot summer's day than art on an index card, am i right? ok, cool drinks are also nice... but this post just has index cards:

day twenty two: bicycle

it's a very very (VERY!) abstract version of a bicycle wheels. with spokes, etc. wellllllllllllll... sorta.

day 23: off-prompt

at julie balzer's gel print class!

i knew this day, with julie's amazing 6 hour class at the ink pad, would be as long and tiring as it was fun, and i was right! so luckily the night before i had used some ancient vinyl alphabet stickers to mask a couple of index cards and i printed on them during class. this was my fave.

day twenty four: off-prompt

mandala monday

handcut mandala layers made from paint-testing gel prints. nothing fancy. because it was assembled at 10pm in my hotel room! ;)

day twenty five: rose

this is one of my favorite cards from the whole of ICAD so far. firmly within my comfort zone of vintage paper collage, but none the worse for that, imo.

day twenty six: off-prompt 

rainbow ribbon doodles

this card was made at the end of the night on which i finished my samples for a hand-lettering class i will be teaching next month at paper anthology. when you see the cards from the class, you will see EXACTLY how i got here, lol!

day twenty seven: inspired by maud vantours

i haven't made anything inspired by MV in a bit, but as soon as i made this card with folded, layered triangles i was immediately re-smitten. this arrangement also reminds me of the crocodile stitch in crochet!

day twenty eight: inspired by clover robin 

one of my favorite things about ICAD is the opportunity to "try on" different artists' styles and see what they feel like. i have just recently discovered clover robin on instagram. she is an illustrator who draws and paints with handcut collaged papers. it's kind of hard to explain, so just GO SEE! btw, it's harder than you think to just freehand cut out even quite familiar shapes without drawing guidelines. just sayin'... :)

♥♥♥

it's not too late to join the index card a day project! don't worry about catching up, just start on july 1st and do the month! or start today and do one week. honestly, the numbers are the least important part of it!!! think of something you've always wanted to try; then figure out how to put it on an index card.

ready... set... GO!

♥

a round up that moves around

which seems appropriate for the index card a day project, in which all things experimental... and indeed "mental" for that matter, lol... are fair game. also, getting a whole week's worth of cards into a post first thing monday morning was a bit tiring, lol. so let's see if saturday is a bit more relaxed. ♥

day eighteen: off prompt

sticking with my fallback position of, "when all else fails... zen doodle!" i had fun with the supplies that were already on my table this particular night: a fabulous hexagon stencil that michelle ward designed exclusively for the ink pad and some ranger inks. plus my trusty faber-castell pitt artist pen, the one with the XS (.1mm) nib which i reach for over and over and over...

day nineteen: yellow

a collage of random yellow things, mostly snipped out of old childrens' dictionaries. quite spare for me, but once i had that canary on there, singing to an empty room, i felt like it was DONE.

day twenty: off prompt

something which has been a fallback position for me during every ICAD ever, is random collage. it's my comfort zone. and again, if you're going to start your ICAD at 11pm, it is a good idea to use whatever happens to be on your table at that time. in this case that happened to be: scraps of vintage paper, a couple of butterflies diecut from an old subway map, a pre-painted colorburst rainbow on a gridded card and a wendy vecchi leaf stencil. ta-da. :)

day twenty one: guitar

a less random collage. because i was thinking about the prompt during the day, and i knew i had a loteria card with a guitar. i also grabbed the definition of guitar from a childrens' dictionary and a vintage south american passport stamp. the sheet music and ancient rub-on transfers just happened to be there and then worked. woohoo.

♥♥♥

happy saturday!!!

,it is sunny here for the first time in about a week and 

i'm planning to take full advantage of that fact!

♥

round 'em up!

the ICADs, that is. btw, it's not too late for you to join the fun. no need to catch up, just start now and keep going for as long as it is FUN! :) meanwhile, here's what i made in a 3 x 5" size this week:

day eleven: palm

i can't say i'm love with my finished colorburst watercolor of a palm tree, but it was really really fun to paint, so i'm calling it A WIN! :)

 day twelve: tapestry

this is a collage idea i played with last year during ICAD: strips of paper (in this case some are chopped up photos of needlepoint tapestries, lol) pieced a bit like a scrap quilt. i haven't really broken any new ground, but i have ideas swirling around in my head, so i expect you'll see things like this periodically... 

day thirteen: balcony

i did not have any kind of brainwave for "balcony" so i went back to my unused idea from "macaron" last week: pastel gel print punched into circles, then re-arranged. at the moment all i can see is a sort of abstract inchworm. but i do feel like this could at some point lead somewhere! probably i should have either used only one size of circle punch? orrrrrrrrrrr maybe just cut all of the circles precisely in half? i think i need to let the idea simmer a bit more...

day fourteen: thread

more strips. these were from a stripey bit of leftover colorburst, in which i blended lime, pthalo green and indigo. i was playing with the idea of making the shades line up in interesting ways, a bit like woven fabric. kinda.  

day fifteen: storm
following my semi-plan to fall back on zen-doodles when i don't have another idea, here are some stormy zen doodles! :)

day sixteen: chandelier
yes, it's another one-staple collage. what can i say? i still love them!

day seventeen: (off-prompt) mandala monday
i had an entirely different plan in mind, but then my pipsticks stickers came on friday and there were TINY TYPEWRITERS. 'nuff said...

...and thus we wrap up another another index-card-a-day week!

♥♥♥

i can, therefore... ICAD!

the first full week of ICAD (and coincidentally also of june lol) is behind us. how can the days be flying by SO FAST, eh??! here's what i made on index cards this past week:

day four: reflection

i stumbled upon the definition of "reflection" in an old children's dictionary which featured the same colors (and angles!) of a butterfly i had already cut out. you can't argue with serendipity like that. so i just made a one-staple collage instead.

day five: tourist map

i wound up covering most of this old map of detroit, which is a shame since it's so pretty. on the other hand, mandevillea, a 1950's "toyopet" automobile and a beautiful chinese stamp from my ATC swap partner arlyna in shanghai are nothing to sneeze at...

day six: leaves or petals

my friend cyndie is doing ALL zentangle-inspired art for ICAD this year. and she is AWESOME at it. i am not awesome at it... but it's fun!

day seven: stencil

"S" is for stencil... and skyline... and sunset...

(ps: note how beautifully pristine i keep my favorite stencils, lol!)

day eight: goggles

i will never, ever, EVER, admit how dang much time i spent on this one, lol!!! especially since it's really just a couple of circle punches and dies stacked together, so it should have been super-fast and easy. having said all of that... i do actually love how my steampunk goggles came out!

(this is the magazine illustration i placed behind the "goggles" card, 

so that you would see something cool through the eyes!)

day nine: macaron

i actually did have a pretty good idea for "macaron" but then on the morning of day nine, i saw my first cedar waxwing, perching on the yew just outside our dining room window. so *obviously* that changed everything...

day ten: sapphire

i've tried gems before, and whereas i excel at making the fab colorburst backgrounds (this one is indigo and prussian blue); creating the facets is ALWAYS harder than i think it will be, lol. this one came out pretty well, though i confess it was my second attempt! 

♥♥♥

it's a bit of a grey monday here in new jersey, so let's make some COLORFUL art to perk it up!

it's the first mandala monday of ICAD...

...and here are my first few index cards a day for 2019! (if you want to know more about ICAD visit this page at daisy yellow art!) ♥

day one: off prompt

one of tammy g's teaser graphics had this phrase and i sorta fell in love with it. i would not rule out additional versions being made at some point in the next 60 days...

day two: peppermint

whenever possible, if i'm using the (100% optional) prompts, i like to go with the very first thing that pops into my head. which, for peppermint, meant those little red and white pinwheel candies that are required by law to sit next to the cash register in all italian restaurants. as far as i know, no one EVER eats these; so it's possible, in an older restaurant, that these candies are now vintage decor items... :) 

day three: magenta

do you know the difference between fuchsia and magenta? ok apparently nobody really entirely does, although most people seem to agree that magenta is a bit more purple than fuchsia is. this article at the difference between dot com sort of sums up the main points. (and this somewhat tangential article has other fascinating color name origins!) what does any of this have to do with my card? well, it's a mandala which features both vibrant fuchsia and magenta archival ink (plus some chrome yellow, tea rose and poppy) over a collage of dictionary definitions of the two shades and some of their composite colors, like fuchsine, rosaniline and aniline red.

♥♥♥

if you'd like to see my ICADs as they post each day, i'd love for you to visit me over at instagram. be sure to also check out the official hashtag, dyicad2019 to see what everyone is making! to see all the index card art i've ever made (presumably as the cure for severe insomnia); yep, there's an ICAD blog tag, which goes from today all the way back to my first cards in 2012.