Paper-Paisleys Art Adventures: January 13th Weekly Post

Hey there!

Hope the week is treating you right so far.

Our realtor is holding his own but still not out of danger yet.

Our week was taken up with a ton of paperwork, so he hasn't missed anything.

Appraisal should be next week or the week after.

Otherwise, same old same old.

The weather here has been consistently cool this week. Today it barely got to 60F in the daytime, which is cool down here, lol. Lows in the high 40's. Every 3 days or so, we get another little front to keep it this way.

I feel kinda confident saying we won't have any snow this winter because we had no hurricane this past summer. Old wives' tale but truthful most of the time (all of the time in my lifetime).

Y'all can remind me if it does snow, lol.

The theme this week at Sunday Postcard Art is Feathered Friends, hosted by Deann.

I need a few more Mardi Gras decorations, so when I saw these crows/ravens at Trendify Designs Etsy, I got them to use. And of course, I had to go with the low-hanging pun fruit of Mardi Caw. Corbeau is the Cajun word for crow, and the groups that form to create parade floats, parties and general mayhem at Mardi Gras are called Krewes. So these crows belong to Krewe du Corbeau (the Crow Crew, translated lol). I have a neighbor who relocated here after Katrina from New Orleans, and she has approved this message.

😁

I layered the digital image onto a 4x6 blank document in PSE, added the text with the Text tool and printed out. Then using some DCWV glitter card stocks in green and purple, I cut them with an MFT ric rac die to create the top and bottom borders. To finish, I added some yellow gold glitter card stock diamonds that were cut with a Spellbinders die.

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One of the things I have on my 2026 list is to use the Art Impressions watercolor stamp sets I've been buying over the last few years. AI has a specific way of using Tombow markers scribbled on an acrylic block and picking up with a damp brush to paint. Also stamping by coloring the different parts of the stamp with the Tombows. I've watched several videos and decided to make some card front focal images.

This card uses their wagon stamp and various small flower and grass stamps. The card base is SU and the designer papers were in my scrap stash. I used the MFT ric-rac dies again with white card and also an Amazon sentiment die and Memory Box butterfly die.

And here's the sketch I used.

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Okay, this is a Flip-Flap Easel card I made for my friend who lives on a farm on the edge of the Sam Houston National Forest a couple hours northeast of me. She loved this and frankly, I do too, lol. I think it's my best one so far. I used AI stamp sets that had the barn, the fence, birds and the tractor, and also the grasses and wildflowers/weeds. With the help of these, I created the landscape. Lots of layers of Prima designer papers and white card mats on an SU olive green card base. Ink-edging with Distress Inks and a vertical Happy Birthday die that I cut from card I painted same color as the barn. The garden poems are very old rubber stamps, the makers of which I've long forgotten.

Here's the sketch I followed. I went one further and put my flip flaps on a full tent card base, then scored the back across in the middle and glued that shut at the top half. This created an easel which I connected with a stop so it wouldn't do the splits under the card's weight.