"Home Sweet Home" ICAD2 for 6/21/12

Ok, I might be making the Index-Card-A-Day Challenge a little more challenging than I hoped and/or planned. I've just been so inspired! I didn't realize my brain needed a little discipline to work on something everyday, and now I am hungry, hungry, hungry for art all the time. I LOVE this!
This card is from June 21, 2012. It definitely took me more than one day to do this. I'm not getting a card a day done -  and I gave myself permission to do that at the start. However, I do believe I am still benefitting from this challenge like crazy. If I'm not getting one card a day done then I am at least working on one (or two or three at a time) each day. AND THAT COUNTS.


This house, bird, and nest image is something I've worked on before in different formats - for domino pendants and ATCs. Now I felt it needed an ICAD2 work-up. 
I started by making a house shaped template that fit the index card. I cut the house out of another index card, pasted scrapbook paper over it, and added the tissue tape. Then I stitched around the edges on my sewing machine.  
The sky is layered torn dictionary pages secured with matte medium. I added some watered down blue paint then splattered really watery gesso over it. I left the torn edges because they reminded me of deckled edges on handmade paper. The edge was then shaded with a darker blue Copic marker. 
The lettering is hand stamped in red pigment ink - which I had to stamp a billion times because I always mess up the last letter and ruin it. It's matted with dark red cardstock. The edges are inked to "age" and soften them. 


The bird and nest images are from flickr's collage images group. I love the detail and texture in these pieces. My printer went light on the ink for this printing - not sure why. I went back over the pictures with colored pencils to bring out the color more. The gleaming highlight in the bird's eye is a dot of white gel pen. I also highlighted the eggs with white gel pen. 


After I adhered the bird and nest to the background it all looked very flat. I used colored pencils to shade around the bird and nest for some dimension. It really perked the piece up. I also ran a thin line of dark brown pencil to the very edges of the paper of the collage images to bring them out more. 


Oh, how I love using foreign postage stamps in my collage! I have about 20 pounds of old stamps (anyone need any?). I chose this one for the color and the country of origin - France - so it would tie in with the tissue tape behind it that has French on it.  


The back of the index card has the stitching I did with my sewing machine. I love sewing on paper. I'm stamping the date the card is finished on the back. I should go back and add some more details to the information of the piece. 

"home sweet home" Index-Card-A-Day2
Mixed media & paper collage on index card
3"x 5"
© 2012 Victoria Porter/In My Head Studios

This ICAD2 looks adorable on a tiny easel I found at the craft store! 

I am a bit behind on posting more ICADs that I have finished. There's much more to come!

- Vickie

It’s All Green, Baby

Spring is springing here in lovely Rochester and where I am in Irondequoit. The trees have filled back up with leaves. Hostas are sprouting. Lilacs are blooming!

Plants are making their way up in my flowerbed in the backyard. This is our first spring in our first house so I have no idea what is “plant” and what is “weed” just yet. I’m letting it grow wild until I figure it out. Never really had anywhere to do any weeding or planting so I’m actually looking forward to getting dirty out there. Mr. M says his duty is the grass and I should tend to the other plants outside. Fair deal.

Mr. M bought me the tomato plants I asked for. And he got me surprise strawberry plants. I must find a way to keep the voracious and abundant squirrels here away from them so I get to eat the fruits of my labor.

The raspberries I told you about last year are also coming up. There are more plants this year on our side of the fence! Yay!! Our neighbor who owns the plants has Crohn’s so he cannot eat them anyway due to the little seeds. The berries won’t be out until July I think.

I adore this time of year here. Life is retuning to abundance instead of cold scarcity. My soul thrives on the green lushness around me. We got so lucky to have tall trees in our neighborhood so they can surround me. I love trees. They’re magical! I’m known to literally hug trees.

Now I need to convince Mr. M that I need a laptop so I can work on the patio and enjoy my lovely weather and deciduous companions!

Sign Your Money Away

Finally the Macintosh is up and running and I have Photoshop back. So I made a little mortgage signing collage for you!



Mr. M must have signed his name 50 times. The lawyer thought I was nuts for taking so many pictures of my hunny signing his name. No one in his office has done that before, which surprised me as so many people blog about such momentous occasions. I’m not an owner of the house so I didn’t have to sign one thing.

I did have a chance to look through the abstract about the property. I wish I could remember more dates to tell you about right now, but the abstract went back to at least Civil War era. The mystery of whose last name is etched on our front door knocker was solved. It belonged to the owners previous to the owners we bought the house from. We must get this remedied as I feel the house is “marked” by another family’s name. Who really lives here? I would take it down right now, but the front doorbell does not work, and the knocker is the only way we know if someone has stopped by.

We are still living in Box Town, but less so as the garage is now filling up with empty boxes. We’re saving the empty ones for our neighbors who will be moving soon. Sad to see them go as they are super nice. They were having a Father’s Day BBQ on the day we moved, and they brought us hot dogs, BBQ, soda, and dessert!

The Move

We have arrived at the new house. We’ve been here for a week and 2 days. (Sorry, little blog, for neglecting you, but there has been too much on my “to do” list to tend to you. Please forgive me.)

I just love this house and so does Mr. M. It’s adorable and spacious and still filled with boxes. My main Mac computer still is not set up and I am blogging from the crummy laptop. I say we need a new Apple laptop so I can blog and Etsy from my lovely patio.

The kitchen is all done and we started on the living room over the weekend. Slowly but surely. The studio is about half set up. Most of the furniture is in the right places and now all I have to do is unpack boxes and set up my computer desk and work table.

We got a “trial by water” into new homeownership these past few weeks. We had a microburst come through and drop a lot of rain in a short time. The dining room window’s storm window was up so the windowsill filled with water. It seeped under the window and filled my dining room with water, about 1/4” deep on the wood floor. We were not living here yet so this water sat on our wood floor for a day until I stopped by to check on things and found the puddle. It had seeped down into the basement ceiling by this time. There was no landlord to call to come fix this. It’s now 100% our mess! Yay!

All is well now and the damage was not bad. Cleaning out the gutters seems to have fixed the water coming in the house problem. The water damage is giving Mr. M a reason to tear out the finished basement ceiling and replace it with drywall. He needs a project or two.

We had four owls in the backyard this weekend. They were beautiful. Our whole neighborhood is well covered with huge trees, one of the reasons I wanted to live here. I love trees. I have heard owls here but had not seen them until they landed in our tree. I tried really hard to get a picture for you but my camera would not focus in the dark. Grrr. Are owls good things to have around? Will they eat mice?

OK. Enough with the really long post for now. I’ll catch y’all up over the next week and will have pictures of the new house and studio as soon as I can get the Mac going.

{ no place like it }

Staying up this late paid off! I managed to snag an Etsy Treasury!!

See it HERE! If you click on each item or comment you will be my new friend!