Embroidered Collage

Now I'm satisfied.  I'm setting five of the cards aside for now, as I have plans for them.  I'll likely keep the daffodils, though.  The card in the upper right still doesn't quite capture the aesthetic impression I was going for, but it's a good card in its own right and will be traded somewhere. 

I was staring at the cards from the last blog entry and decided to try adding on new focal points, so I went digging back through my collage images until I found an interesting one for each card.  I wanted the two to go together in some fashion, not just have the card be an interesting background for the image.  They looked a little awkward when I collaged on the image, but then I took colored pencils to the cards to achieve that integration.  By coloring across some images and adding lines in various places I was able to make the compositions looks complete.  I also took the opportunity to enhance the value relationships - making sure there were enough darks and lights on each card.  I have a tendency to use too many mid-tones in my artwhen I'm not paying close attention.