Can you stand one more post on NOLA Live?!

Postcard Pocket

One of the things we did at NOLA Live was to draw names for a Postcard Swap. Each person pulled a name of someone they weren't traveling with so that we could learn more about each other. We all agreed to mail our postcards around the first of December, 2011. Once the card was received, we each posted to a private blog for the big "reveal!"

I received this wonderful postcard from Adine Rotman:

© Adine Rotman Posted with permission

This was from Mardi Gras World and Adine added glitter to really captured the glow and glory of the original dragon.

I wanted to add Adine's postcard in my sketchbook, but I didn't want to glue it down. Instead, I created another pocket so that it would be protected and I could see either side easily.

I decided to really have fun and play with the idea of a postcard on my journal page. I used a postcard rubber stamp and a brown pen to give my pocket the look of a postcard:


 I also included two special stamps:


For the first one, I took the Imaginary Trips logo, printed it out small, cut it out and then "antiqued" the paper with a sepia ink pad used for stamps. After I glued it down, I used a rubber stamp of mail cancellations over the top of it in another brown.


The second stamp is one of the hand carved stamps I made last year with the NOLA Live logo written on top of it.

Last, but certainly not least, I added a copy of my postcard to the page:


I painted one of the other "traveler's" on the trip, Cheryl Gebhart! This is truly an "imaginary" painting in that I combined her outfit from one photo, her posture and gear from another and the garden from yet another photo.

Again, I printed out the image to more of a postage stamp size and then attached it over another piece of paper so that it is raised off from the journal page.

We had quite the variety of postcards—cows, queens, windows, cathedrals, courtyards, and beignets all showed up! It was a lot of fun to see everyone's creativity and individual take on NOLA was lots of fun!

It was also a nice surprise to find in the mail and a wonderful reminder of fun times in the middle of December's maddness!