The elf - that would be me - is hard at work

Scenes from the studio in recent weeks, as holiday production geared up ...

It might look like a mess to you, but I call it production!
Various greeting cards fresh off the printer, waiting to be
gathered up, cut, folded, packaged and labeled. Newest
Christmas one - Season's Greetings from Cincinnati - at bottom. 

My first attempt at glass ornaments. My studio home
- Brazee Street Studios - houses a glass school.
On Monday, all Brazee artists were invited to try their hand
at making a trio of ornaments. Different shapes were available
but I stuck with circles. These are pretty rudimentary, but I
enjoyed making them under the guidance of Leah Busch,
who has to be the MOST patient woman in the universe.

My studio tree. It's a work in progress,
and is hung with collages - tags,
ornaments, etc. - that are for sale.
I stuck my glass ornaments on it, too,

Collage tags featuring vintage Santa images
from my Santa card collection (yes, I have one).
Most have been sold, or are for sale at
Nvision in Northside. Hope to whip up more
when I hit the studio today. 

The holiday Tinys - my new line of
petite gift enclosure cards. This side
of the rack is all Santa, but there
are plenty of other designs,
including non-holiday
(see earlier post). 

Santa's on his way ...

It's no secret that I'm smitten with Santa. He's appearing on all manner of paper goods from stamped gift tags - using my favorite image - and collaged tags to collages and prints.

I'm just finishing new Santa collages for this weekend's Showcase of Arts at the Woman's Art Club of Cincinnati (10-4 Saturday Dec. 7, noon-4 Sunday Dec. 8 rain, sleet, ice or snow … so they say).

Here's a peek at them … the first three are on 6"x 6" hardwood panels, and are ready to hang with a hanger on the back. They're sealed, and the sides are varnished. The second three are on covered book board - 4" x 7.75" - and hang from vintage seam binding threaded through the grommets at the top of each.

Hope to see you this weekend, but, please, be careful out there ...

Available for the first time ...

"Seed Bombs," above, is one of the reproductions of original collages that will be sold for the first time at the annual Tiger Lily Press sale. It's printed with archival-quality inks on 100% cotton rag paper. It will be available in two sizes: 7"x9" (matted in an acid-free mat to fit 11"x14" frame) and 8"x11" (matted to fit a 12"x16" frame). All the prints are of collages that are no longer available.

There will be other first-time prints at the sale, too, including the debut of Sweet Petite Prints. These are repros of Sweet Petite collages no longer available, such as "Day Dreaming" (below). Like the originals, they are matted to fit a 5"x7" frame.  

And look for the first cards in my new "Lux" line of holiday greeting cards ... also printed on 100% cotton rag paper ... here's a preview (the image is adapted from a 1920 postcard, I know, kind of sentimental for me) ... if I say so myself, they are gorgeous!

Christmas in July

Ho! Ho! Ho! 5
mixed media collage: antique postcard and illustration (St. Nicholas magazine);
vintage sheet music and embossed scrap (printed in Germany); recycled greeting card
and wrapping paper; acrylic paint, ink, acrylic sealer, acrylic varnish.
5" x 5" on cradled hardwood panel. (2011)
(SOLD)

Ho! Ho! Ho! 2
mixed media collage: antique endpaper; vintage embossed scrap (printed in Germany),
sheet music and book page (Book of Intertype Faces, 1928); acrylic gel transfer; ink,
acrylic sealer, acrylic varnish. 5" x 5" on cradled hardwood panel. (2011)
(SOLD)

Wow. You never know WHEN a piece might sell. Like when it is 95 degrees and winter seems light years away.

A woman who was picking up her children from a class, dropped into the studio last week. As she browsed, she mentioned liking the cradled birch boxes that the Out On a Limb series is made on. We talked a bit and I happened to say that the only other series created in that format was one with Santas.

Her eyes lit up. It turned out that she and her children gave her mother a Santa every year, and that she was looking for ones that were not mass-produced. I told her that there were a few Santas left in the series.

She didn't have time to look at them, but gave me her e-mail address, took one of my cards and said she'd be back. The next morning, I had a note from her in my in box. She did return, and ended up buying the two Santas above - she brought her children with her to make the selection and they were evenly split, so she got both - as well as Out On a Limb: 26 and Out On a Limb: 30.

She had spotted the latter on the web site. Or maybe it was the blog? No matter, because it ended up being Christmas in July for me, as well as for her.

Flights of fancy

It was 1907 - just a few years after the Wright brothers took to the skies - and the world was entranced by the idea of flight. So, how would an illustrator imagine the future port of New York as anything other than a fantastic Sky Harbor? That's where artist Arthur T. Merrick's imagination took him in the November 1907 issue of Saint Nicholas Magazine. The popular children's monthly included many whimsical spot illustrations. Here's another one from the December 1907 issue featuring artist E.B. Bird's musing on Santa's chosen mode of transport 100 years in the future ...

Ten little Santas ...

Ho! Ho! Ho! 9 
(SOLD)

Ho! Ho! Ho! 10
Price: $75.

Here they are, the final Santas in the "Ho! Ho! Ho!" series. That's it - at least for this year. I'm moving past the holiday to new series and extensions of some past ones - Out on a Limb, False Sense of Security - for exhibits in the spring.

Ho! Ho! Ho! 9 features an engraving of a DIY pinecone Santa from Godey's Lady's Book that I scanned to use on a postcard promoting last week's open studio and this month's extended studio hours. Isn't he splendid! Behind him: 1950s greeting cards, a sliver of a map of Ohio (yeah, the same Harper's map from 1877 that I've been using every last inch of during the past month) and a strip of wood veneer. 5" x 5" on claybord/hardwood panel ready to hang.

Ho! Ho! Ho! 10 is strictly '50s/'60s via recycled cards from the era and, yes, authentic Christmas seals. I lucked into sheets and sheets of vintage Christmas seals last year.  5" x 5" on claybord/hardwood panel ready to hang.

Down through the chimney ...

Ho! Ho! Ho! 1
(SOLD)

Opps! Meant to post two Santas today, but just realized that I didn't scan one of them. So, this Santa is solo. Well, not quite, since there are two Santas on the collage. The central image is from a vintage Hallmark postcard that reproduced an antique image. The Santa in the background was printed on an envelope for a newsletter. The other background elements are (from left to right): antique book spine lining, recycled greeting card, a border from the "Intertype Book of Intertype Faces" (1928) and recycled marbled wrapping paper. 5" x 5" on claybord/hardwood panel.

He knows when you are sleeping ...

Ho! Ho! Ho! 6
Price: $75

Ho! Ho! Ho! 7
Price: $75

The Santas keep going and going and ... The collage at top features an 1877 map of Ohio not just behind  Santa but also on the sides of the panel, which is about an inch deep. At first, I left the sides of all the Santa panels bare. The wood is attractive with a natural varnish, and it makes the pieces feel a bit cleaner and more modern.

Then, I made a mistake when trying to add stamped dots to the side of one and had to cover them with something (the bingo Santa in yesterday's post, if you must know). Next thing, I was tackling the sides of a few more. On the bottom collage, I stamped "confidential" on the wood, allowing the ink to fade so that it has a random, rushed feel. 5"x5"x1" on claybord/hardwood panel.

Ho! Ho! Ho!

Ho! Ho! Ho! 4
(SOLD)

Ho! Ho! Ho! 8
(SOLD)

Two more depictions of the Jolly Old Elf from the new Santa series. The top collage is a recycled greeting card that, in turn, used an antique illustration. The background includes a brochure that featured Edward T. Hurley's 1911 painting "The Midnight Mass," which depicts Cincinnati's Mount Adams' neighborhood on a snowy night. It's quite beautiful and can be seen in the Cincinnati Wing at the Cincinnati Art Museum and they offer it as a poster; (although the image on the web site does it little justice). 5"x5" on claybord/hardwood panel.

The bottom collage also is a recycled greeting card. I just loved that Santa being doted on at the salon. The bingo card was a long, paper one. I topped it with dotted vellum rescued from an invitation and a sliver of a gorgeous, screen-printed envelope liner from the 1920s. I found it in a cache of letters and greeting cards that were being sold years ago at an estate sale. 5"x5" on claybord/hardwood panel.

Santa, baby

Ho! Ho! Ho! 2
(SOLD)

Ho! Ho! Ho! 3
Price: $75.

As I mentioned a few days ago, I'm enamored with Ampersand's 5"x5" claybord/hardwood panels, so I used them as the base for my new Ho! Ho! Ho! series of Santa collages. I'm a sucker for Santas of every era and am trying to mix it up in this series. The Santa at the top is a vintage German scrap from the days when Germany was divided and it was printed in West Germany. The Santa at the bottom is from a vintage American greeting card that didn't have a publisher's name - or copyright - printed on it.

They are backed by a variety of papers including vintage sheet music, a type maker's catalog and antique endpaper (top), and recycled wrapping paper, greeting cards and a vintage price tag (bottom). Right now, there are eight in the series, so you'll be seeing more.

Holiday hours at Paper With a Past Studio

I adore this DIY craft project Santa from the December 1868 issue of Godey's Lady's Book, so I thought he'd be the perfect image for the announcement of extended holiday hours at my studio. I put all this info on the studio page but thought it would be good to repeat it here. Instead of being open only during the second Friday night open studios, Paper With a Past will be open noon-8 p.m. Thursdays ('cept Thanksgiving) and 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturdays through Dec. 22.

Please stop by to see what's new. I'll be whipping up all kinds of holiday goodies from ornaments to greeting cards to tags to, well, whatever else comes to mind. I'll also be squeezing in some new non-holiday collages. For directions to the studio: go here.

Oh, I'm usually at work every afternoon, so if you want to stop by at another time, please call or text 254-9776. I'll try to keep my cell on - really!