More Balloons, Afternoon & Evening

The second in the hot air balloon series is set at dusk.





The third in the hot air balloon series is set closer to noon.

Balloons

This is my first artwork of 2012. I wanted to continue the series of prints with collaged papers, like the 'Unicorn amongst umbrellas' and the sailing ships, and I had the idea of hot air balloons. So, I sought out images, paricularly of vintage balloons in the late 18th and early 19th century. Some of the pioneers like the Montgolfier brothers, built the most spectacular and astounding vehicles. I love that they deemed it necessary to produce elaborately decorated balloons. Many of the early ones had sails and baskets shaped like ships, in order to sail the skies.



I inked my lino block in a gradient of colours to produce the 'key' print of he sky at sunset on Japanese kozo (or mulberry paper) approximately 12 inches by 13 inches (30.5 cm by 33 cm). I printed the balloons within the block on variety of Japanese washi paper (kozo, chiyogami and katazome-shi patterned paper) and vintage sheet music, and collaged them. I am making a series of these multimedia; each one is unique. This is first in the series.

Feed My Paper Habit

So, one of my favorite haunts, The Paper Place is having the 2nd annual chiyogami giveaway.. You know that I need 700 sheets of 8.5 x 11 chiyogami, but if you would like to enter too, just check out their blog for more details.

Dear Paper Place,

If you give me the loot, I promise to make lovely things like these:


Maybe I can convince someone to help me make a video for 50 extra entries, because I think I probably do qualify as chiyogami super-fan. You might notice that this blog even has both a chiyogami and a washi tag.

Most Sincerely,

Unicorn Amonst Umbrellas

For my 'U' panel of the alphabet quilt, I decided to carve a new block, which harkens back to my ATC for the Alphabet ATC swap. I need to get some double-sized interfacing. In the meanwhile, I am having some serious fun printing my block on paper. See:










This is the first way I interpreted this idea, for my ATC swap in 2006:


It's going to look awesome in my quilt. It looks like stained glass. :)


The first unicorn is here, the second unicorn is here and the third unicorn is here.