Tiger, tiger...

As I started to post, I remembered vaguely some poem about a tiger. Of course, googling provided the source. The Poem is by William Blake:

TIGER, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Birch trees

I love birch trees, they're so beautiful! I had one outside my bedroom window growing up, and I remember just sitting at my window and daydreaming as I gazed at it. I confess that as much as I loved that tree, I tortured it. The bark of a birchtree peels off like parchment paper ... so hard to resist! It's amazing it survived me (though to my sorrow, I've heard it since has died). Anyway, when I was ordering Oriental stamps from OnyxXpressions, I couldn't resist adding this image!

I often forget to check the settings on our digital camera, and my daughter often changes them when she uses it. So, all my birch cards - as well as other cards photographed at the same time - turned out a little funny in the photos. I took pictures of the cards again, still not realizing the problem, so they didn't look any better. I was out of time, so I shipped all the cards off to the Houghton store even though the pics were not very good. :-(

Sailor Birthday

I realized Friday evening that if I wanted to make sure my sailor received his birthday package on time, we needed to mail it out Saturday morning. I'm in a flurry of cardmaking for the craftstore ... finally closing my website means I need to redo all the labels on the backs of my cards. So, I need to get the cards back that are there now, and replace them with "current label" cards. So ... I knew I needed some help! I did a search on Splitcoast stampers, and found this card there. While I have intended occasionally to case a card, usually I end up designing something altogether different. But this card was so perfect, I changed very little at all.

Chinese Thank you

One of the complications of making foreign language/culture cards is knowing exactly how to use any given word/phrase. This particular thank you is a very formal one; I would not have wanted to make a "cute" card with it. The background panels on all three are from a Sherwin Williams discontinued wallpaper sample book. It is a very thick, elegant pattern, with thread-like strands running through it.

Another complication is mixing up languages occasionally, ahem, as I did with this one. Thanks to my patient and faithful friend, Ben, I have corrected this post to read "Chinese" Thank you instead of Japanese (see his comment on this post). I do recall him mentioning, when I showed him the stamp, that it was a formal form of the word; so that part is correct. As Japanese, I am told, has four levels of thank you, and Ben can read Japanese as well, it never occured to me to confirm the language!

Being accurate is important to me, so I hope anyone who reads my blog will let me know when I have made an error. :-)

Kitties!

We're not cat people here, though we had befriended a neighborhood manx, occasionally setting out goodies for him or her ... my husband initiated the relationship in hopes it would take care of mice. Or so he says. I think he just misses our dog. :-) We haven't seen the cat since the weather got bitter cold, so we'll see.

Anyway, despite not wanting to own a cat, I did think these little darlings would be great for the campus store. The background is a much nicer purple than my camera says it is. :-)

Doggie Devotion

OnyxXpressions is having a great sale right now, and although I think I exhibited some great self-control, I couldn't resist purchasing at least a few stamps. :-) That gave me the starting point I needed for card posting; I've got quite a few cards, and wasn't sure where to start posting. So, I'll be putting up a few OnyxXpressions cards ...

I try to be very practical when purchasing stamps. But while browsing through their catalog to order stamps for foreign language cards, this dog, and the corresponding text, were just too cute to resist!

Tiger card

This was a stamp chosen for my foreign/language culture cards; it will fit in well with Asian and African cards. I really enjoy the look of this guy ... very sophisticated cat!

Evening at Sakawa Bridge

Detail stamps are always challenging, at least I find them so. I don't think that the manufacturing of them has quite been perfected, though they're still pretty amazing, and usually worth the bother of playing around with inks and cardstocks to find the combination that works. Definitely glossy is the best, followed by matt cardstock that is very smooth and not porous. But here again, there's no consistent way of being sure. An organized person keeps a record of what works best, but I am not organized, so each time I get a photo stamp, I have to play again!

Photo paper works for some techniques calling for glossy, but not very well for detail stamps. The cardstock on which I stamped this image came from a friend who is in a recycling business, so I have no clue where it came from. It has a sort of mulberry wood pattern on the other side, which I do not especially care for, but the back was the best cardstock I had (I was completely out of glossy).

To my great irritation, I don't know what ink I used! It was either Stazon black, or versafine. I wasn't happy with even this image. I was actually regretting the purchase until I finally persuaded myself to attempt to color it, after Cheryl at OnyxXpressions linked me to a gallery sample. (I love company galleries!) I had first brayered using a Ranger Big&Juicy pad, which is all I had actually wanted to do in the first place. Then I used eye shadow applicators to add more color. Again, coloring is very intimidating to me, so this was scary, lol! When I finished, I still couldn't figure out what the "brown things" were (houses), so I googled the print from which the stamp came, and saw the lights in the windows. :-)

Japanese/Kanji Sympathy

When purchasing foreign language stamps, I tried to avoid text stamps, as with a limited budget, I wanted to focus on images, which I cannot create, rather than text, which can be generated by computer. But I loved the translation of this stamp:

"We share the grieving of the heart."

The colors are rather off, the gray is actually a medium brown and the ribbon does not clash horribly as it appears to in this picture. It is however, not quite the right shade. Lesson learned: when using various shades of a color, wait until daylight to check for compatibility!

Hunan .... what is it?

I found this amazing stamp at Onyx Expressions, but I don't know what it is, nor does my friend from Taiwan! It might be a tree, it might be a fungus. I did tons of searching on the net, to no avail. If you know the answer, please tell me!

I used foil flakes, and the result was so perfect, although I tried, I just could not think of anything else to add to it. :-)