Eco Art: “Forest” by mayah © 2013 Card: 5.5” X 4.25”
Eco Art: “Persimmon Beauty” by mayah © 2013 Card: 5.5” X 5.5”
Both of these greeting cards are made using recycled materials. The backgrounds for both cards are paper scraps left over from other art projects, and a repurposed advertising flier. The foreground designs are from paper towels that a family member used to wipe her brushes on after painting with acrylics. I’ve cut the paper towels into shapes and hand embroidered them. To me, the paint blotches in “Forest” looked like tree trunks and a bird; these shapes were enhanced with hand embroidery. I liked the colors in “Persimmon Beauty” and glued on two dried persimmon "flowers" from a neighbor’s tree.
I finally looked on Wikipedia to find out what this "flower" is botanically called: "A sepal is a part of the flower of angiosperms (flowering plants). Collectively the sepals are called the calyx (plural calyces), the outermost whorl of parts that form a flower." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calyx_(botany) In the persimmon tree, "the calyx generally remains attached to the fruit after harvesting, but becomes easy to remove once the fruit is ripe." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persimmon
So, I can go right on calling these dried calyces "persimmon flowers" after all!
Related Blogs:
Eco Greeting Cards: http://curezone.com/blogs/fm.asp?i=2082809
In making new art, I like to reuse paper and scraps from other art projects as much as possible, as well as use eco-friendlier art supplies.span>
Art: Stitched Paper http://curezone.com/blogs/fm.asp?i=2079244 Experimenting with sewing on paper by hand and machine