Winter, You Left An Impression On Me

It was really quite the weekend. After a week of feeling blase and creatively smushed, I bounced back on Saturday. I sure hope it sticks around for awhile.

While I was housebound due to the winter rain and muck, I finished a rather major undertaking, but there will be more about that later, because this post is about something else.

I got motivated to finally put out that giant sisal rug that we bought when we moved in, and which has been lounging its days since then wrapped snugly it its plastic. No more, I said! And of course, it only took about 15 minutes for us to move some of the boxes out of the dining room, shuttle the dining table out of the way, unwrap that charcoal colored bad boy and arrange it in equidistant proportions in the room. Not only that, but we also narrowed down our collection of boxes which currently reside in our living spaces to a smaller number, moving some of the less necessary ones to the basement, where they will surely have debaucherous parties with all of our other stuff that never sees the light of day, but with which we cannot part. Party on, stuff.

And I started, praytell, even finished, my gocco prints for Clothpaperstring’s Mid Winter Gocco Swap. Which had a deadline of last Monday, by the way. Only a week late. Yeah, I procrastinated the heck out of that baby, and then when it came down to the wire, I got caught with a cold to beat all colds, and I didn’t get it done on time. I am not proud. Procrastination has unfortunately become a bit commonplace for me of late, although it wasn’t always like that, but it makes me supremely sad to miss a deadline. I am so ashamed to be late, even when I know I am not the only one. So to all you swappers who will receive my package in your mailboxes a week later than the mass influx you experienced last week, I apologize. I hope you will find it worth the wait.

My contribution to the swap is an edition of three-color winter inspired art prints. We have gotten more snow in Madison this season than any other on record, so I felt it appropriate to be inspired by it. Snow and trees, that is this winter, for me. The bare tree branches are so beautiful as I look skyward, and the evergreens are a soft reminder of green life, with organic little balls of snow drifting over everything, always. I printed these on white linen textured heavyweight paper, which seems to be one that I favor lately, and experimented a bit with some charcoal linen paper as well. Since printing on dark stock was an experiment, I didn’t print as many as I did on white, so these will go into my etsy shop for sale in the next couple of weeks. I was able to maximize my printable area a bit more by printing these with three screens. I wanted to print them on even larger paper, but I still need to purchase some larger shipping envelopes, so I opted to go as large as I could and still fit them into the envelopes that I had on hand.

This swap was so great to participate in. It was awesome to see how each swapper interpreted the theme. I sure hope I can play along with the next one. Oh, there will be a next one, right?