Embroidered Collage

Two and a half years ago I was making my first artist trading cards.  It hadn't really registered how little time had passed until I was looking through the backup of my previous computer and found some photos and scans from 2004.  I was in many yahoo groups at the time, so these pictures were posted in various places as I took them.  I didn't begin blogging until May 2005, so I thought I would show them to you now.  I can see both how much and how little my work has changed.

My first ATCs were ocean themed and made for a swap on a fabric ATC group.  I remember being amazed that some swappers were going to make multiple sets of ten.  Of course, as I found out later, they were making small quilts by machine - still a time consuming endeavor, but not as much as the way I approached the challenge.  I stitched on the fabric and wrapped it around playing cards and sewed it in place.  I had recently discovered that needlelace could be interesting and artsy instead of traditional and closely worked.  These were also my first experiments with those techniques.

These were among my first collaged atcs, done for one of my first swaps on Nervousness.org, home of many of my mail art endeavors in the months to come.  At the time, I was thinking of the collage as a setting for the stitching.

These were my first experiments with acrylic paint, with a few collage touches.  I received a large art set for Christmas 2004, one of those with a little of many media, and began to play.  I forget what the theme of the swap was, though.