Part of a series of six greeting cards inspired by the need to make a birthday card for Jane Cheek.
For this card I started with a greeting card blank that I’d started to stamp an invitation on (I ended up not using the invitations because evite is easier). I cut a rectangle of scrapbooking cardstock and glued it down. Then I cut out the jack from a scan I made. I had the scan of the stamps too, and I liked that the colors coordinated so I ripped a piece off the photocopy.
There’s a publisher that puts out a calendar of Rumi sayings every year. I don’t care too much for poetry, but I love the artist (Matt Manley)’s work so much that I buy a copy every year. I mean to cut them out and frame them, though I haven’t done so yet because I don’t like the holes in the pictures. I took one of the pictures and cut it up so that it just showed the texture. Then I tore a piece of art paper to mimic the arc of the negative space left by the head. I put a piece of origami paper behind it, and glued them down before adding the jack to the bottom corner.
I thought it would look finished, but there was too much middle-ground texture and no focal point. I’d cut the heart out for another card, so I used that, which worked well since it was the Jack of Hearts on the card. Then for another card I was playing around with laser print decals, and I wanted to put some text. I love the way handwritten text looks on collage art, but I hate the way sharpies look (and when you’re writing on glossy surfaces, really sharpies are the only things you can rely on). So I photocopied one of my writing notebooks, blew the text up about twenty percent, and printed a scan of it.
The full text was from a first draft of my story “Emily’s Fifth Birthday.” The sentence originally read “She’s brought Emily a designer pink tulle dress.” With most of the text cut off, and the pining expression on the Jack’s face, it looks like he’s just come to a party and learned that someone (Emily’s mother perhaps?) has brought the object of his affection.
