postcard

1.4.09 postcard, originally uploaded by robayre.

Here is another piece from my show in December. It’s a mailart postcard in similar style as all of my other postcards, mixed media on watercolor, with the signature “place stamp here” image. I really love this piece and how it came out. I probably started it years ago and it has been amongst my postcards in progress that long.
For the longest time I have wanted to use chalkboard paint and chalk in my pieces. The question has been how to apply the chalk without the fear of it getting spread, erased and destroyed. I tried spraying it with fix, but the chalk just became translucent and disappeared. If I used white paint it just didn’t have the look of chalk. It wasn’t until recently with this piece that the idea occurred to me to try white dry pastel. Tada! It looks and acts similar to chalk and when sprayed with fixative, stays opaque and doesn’t spread.

I found this quote by Stephen King out there somewhere in blogland and have been holding on to it to use somewhere. It goes:

“The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them – words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than the living size then they’re brought out. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you’ve said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That’s the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.”- Stephen King.

I obviously couldn’t fit the whole thing, but the entire quote is wonderful.

Then if you look all the way over to the right there are black and white stripes. If you look closer you will see it is actually knitting. I scanned a piece I was working on, printed it out and applied it. Then above the circle there is a piece of masking tape with staples. This idea was entirely inspired by Rosa, and her love of staples. The rectangle of lined and yellowed notebook paper came from a stack that was in my mom’s classroom and always makes it way into almost all of my postcards. Then the circle is cut from the most amazing wrapping paper ever. I found an old paper bag filled with wrapping papers in my parents basement. The papers turned out to be all from gifts from when I was very little, probably under 5 years old, so they are all very old, vintagey, browning and crispy. All of the papers are amazing, but I have fallen in love with this one in particular. I will have to scan a portion of it to share. I’m sure it will be making it’s way into more of my pieces.

I really love this piece a lot and have just added it to my etsy shop.