Art card: Trellis Flower

I like the way this one turned out, but strictly speaking it’s a bit of a failure. When I set out to make these art cards, the idea was to make them with the leftover odds and ends from other projects and, well, I spent ages hunting through for something that would work with the background and eventually gave up and grabbed a few fresh bits from my stash.

The problem was the background.

I have a little Selphy printer that I mainly use to print out photos to send to my mum who is not on the internet. This is relevant. The prints have perforated strips at each end to make it easier to feed through the printer and so it can print right to the edges; this means the strips have a stripe of colour along one edge. After making a batch of prints last summer, rather than immediately bin the strips, I amused myself for a few minutes weaving them together. Thus making a thing that had to be used and not discarded. A thing that was big enough to stick on an art card. A thing that apparently then didn’t look right with any of the other things I tried to put on it.

So I gave in and grabbed a bit of SnipArt and some paper flowers and leaves. I tore a bit of thin white gauze to soften the background — a few dabs of clear gesso around the edges took some of the shine off it as well — and laid the SnipArt over the top. Then all I had to do was stick the leaves and flowers in place and it was finished.

I do like it, but it really didn’t fit the brief.