Title: In the Forest in my Head
Size: 2.5″ x 3.5″
Status: Available

Strange to say, but this collage is oddly personal, so much so that I’m not really sure how to go into it. So much for vagaries though, I will say this, I believe the birds are Darwin’s finches. By that I mean his actual finches, though I’ve had the birds cut out for so long I can’t remember anymore. I had this phase I went through where I hated having full pages torn out for one small photo, so I cut a bunch of things out. Unfortunately now that means I have bundles of things that I can’t properly identify, which irritates me. Oops!

Regardless, when ever I see birds like this I think about my brief stint doing taxidermy for the Dayton Museum of Natural History. This kind of taxidermy was exactly that I did, helping my aunt go through the donations (because apparently when people find dead animals a lot of times they give them to natural history museums?), stuffing them, tagging them, and then adding them to the archives. I have surprisingly fond memories of working on these birds and going into the shockingly cold specimen room, which I fell asleep in once (a story for another time), and adding my work to the drawers. My aunt told me that almost no one ever saw the specimen room, but that researchers would use it to study things like evolution and migration. I always got the feeling I was doing something really important there and, of course, this is where my love of taxidermy comes from.

What a long story! If you want to add this ATC to your collection it is available, just drop me a line or leave a comment and I will send it out to you.

~ Brigitte

Title: Amethyst
Size: 2.5″ x 3.5″
Status: Available

Amusingly, I made this ATC while attempting to make a collage for the Valentine ATC Swap I signed up for on Swap-Bot. I had all this pink and red stuff laid out and then I found the bedazzled flower on the back of one of the pieces of paper and my brain just misfired. I made this instead! In my absolutely stubbornness I decided that it was at least going to have a February theme so I made it for the February birthstone, Amethyst. Perhaps an Aquarius will want to add this to their ATC collection (though of course anyone can ask for it).

The girl with the orchid hair is from a BCBG Max Azria advertisement, her hair is absolutely stunning, I would sport that color in a second. The amethysts are from my page of birthstones, one of my favorite things I’ve ever cut out, and I’m actually considering trying to make a birthstone collage each month now. The glitter at the top and bottom is actual glitter, scrap booking pages to be exact, but since this was scanned it looks much prettier in real life.

This ATC is free to anyone who would like to give it a home! If you want to add it to your collection just leave a comment or drop me a line and I will send it out to you.

~ Brigitte

PS: Yes, I still have to make that ATC for the Valentine’s swap!

Title: Ophelia 2
Size: 2.5″ x 3.5″
Status: Swapped

Time for Ophelia round two! After I made the first Ophelia ATC I decided that I needed to make a different one for the Yellow Flower ATC swap. I used the same image to make the background; well, not the exact same one obviously, but it’s from the same page. The model is from the Rodarte Spring 2012 runway show, I wanted to take off the head to symbolically remove the individual identity and make it more of a stand in for all Ophelias, if that makes any sense. The blue border is a photograph of actual water and the same goes for the corners. I figured if I wanted my first Ophelia to live I had to have a drowned one to take her place. Kind of like the show “Pushing Daisies,” but super different I guess, since these are just collages. Incidentally, I absolutely love that show and recommend it highly to anyone awesome.

This is the last collage for this month’s 12/12/12 Project! I’m very happy that I managed to complete it with a week to spare. I still have a bunch of collages in the wings; in a way I just want to make all the projects collages, but I think I might get burnt out after so many. At least I have a week to think about it, right?

~ Brigitte

Title: Ophelia
Size: 2.5″ x 3.5″
Status: Not Available

I really like this ATC, so much so that I’m almost unhappy that I made it for the Swap-Bot Yellow Flower ATC swap. Of course that swap doesn’t start until March so I definitely have time to make another yellow flower inspired card so I can squirrel this one away like the selfish monster that I am. The wilted daisy in the background is from the same photo series that I used as the background for the Pompeii collage and the dress in the center is Oscar de la Renta. The borders are from the same set of washi paper that I’ve been using in so many of my ATCs this year. Once it was all finished it just made me think of Ophelia, I guess it was the contrast between the vibrant, garland-wearing girl and the utterly lifeless flower that did it for me.

I honestly don’t know how to feel about Ophelia, I don’t think it’s good though. Part of the fascination with her seems to have to do with the glorification of the “beautiful suicide” wherein the young woman ends her life, usually over love, and her corpse emerges as a symbol of innocence and serenity. In a way it feels like Hamlet wanted to drive Ophelia to suicide, as though that was one of his expressed goals, rather than breaking off their engagement, to just be so god-awful to her that she’d get herself out of the way. Not to mention how it contributes to the “madwoman” trope. I like to think of this Ophelia as a revised one, stomping off to fake her suicide so she doesn’t have to deal with the societal pressure to marry Hamlet even though he’s gone off the deep end.

~ Brigitte

Title: Animal Girls
Size: 2.5″ x 3.5″
Status: Available

After I made “Tiger Girls” I really wanted to make a second, similar collage using the other two models. As you can see I did just that, though I feel like they have a fairly different tone to them, for some reason. These models are from the same magazine’s index page as the others, but one of them got sort of chopped off at the torso so, unlike normal, this one came decapitated. I used more stamps from preciousowl and the background was also used in “Jeweled Gaga.” I actually had this card sitting with the background attached ever since I made that ATC, which was last March, so for about 10 months now.

Over the weekend I met me 12/12/12 collage goal this month. A rousing success! A special thank you to everyone who has been adopting my collages, it’s nice to know that people want them, and it really helps keep me motivated. This also means the blog will be positively inundated with collages this week. Apres moi, le deluge!

This ATC is available for adoption to anyone who would like to add it to their collection, just leave a comment or drop me a line and I will send it out to you.

~ Brigitte

Title: Mary Katrantzou 2
Size: 2.5″ x 3.5″
Status: Available

I’ve already talked about what a fan I am of Mary Katrantzou’s work so there’s no need to go into it again. This ATC is really just about her amazing runway piece there in the center and showing it off. Some times my collages are simple like that! I believe that the piece shown here is from the same collection as her pieces in the previous ATC as well, even though I know I got the images out of different publications. The background is from a Bebe advertisement and the glitter is from a Target circular, of all places.

This ATC is available for adoption to whomever might want it, if you would like to add it to your collection just leave a comment or drop me a line and I will send it out to you.

~ Brigitte

Title: Tiger Girls
Size: 2.5″ x 3.5″
Status: Available

Another ATC featuring more of my preciousowl stamp haul, I gathered up all the tiger ones for use here. I believe the models are from the January 2012 edition of Elle, but I’ll have to double check. There are four models in total so I decided to divide them up into two collages. Believe it or not it took me a shocking amount of time to decide on the stamp placement. This green yellow color scheme is a favorite of mine, too. Some of you might recognize the striped bit background from somewhere as well. It’s all connected!

Happily I’m quite close to my 12/12/12 collage goal this month, exciting! This ATC is available for adoption to anyone who would like to add it to their collection, just leave a comment or drop me a line and I will send it out to you.

~ Brigitte

Title: Pompeii
Size: 5″ x 7″
Status: Adopted

For as long as I remember my collage materials have been divided into three drawers: people, backgrounds, and things. Last week I decided to really dig into the “things” drawer to see if anything inspiring had drifted to the bottom and to generally clean and organize it. Thanks to some misfiling I actually found everything for this collage in that one drawer.

The background is a photo of dried flowers from a really odd photo series that I have in its entirety. I think it may have come from an old copy of Martha Stewart living of all places, I never had a subscription, but a while back a generous spirit gave me a bunch of copies they didn’t want anymore. The woman is definitely from either Elle or Vogue, probably Elle, and I know it’s quite old. The bizarre, haunting, mummified baby, which was actually completely cut out when I found it last week, is almost certainly from a Smithsonian Magazine article on the Vesuvius eruptions. I called the collage “Pompeii,” though it’s almost more likely that the baby is from Herculaneum, since I believe the Pompeii victims were mostly preserved as white plaster figures. I wish I had the caption now so I could verify it because not knowing is irking me. The little torn off piece at the bottom is definitely from a fresco at Pompeii, that much I know.

This collage is also larger than the ATCs, my previous go-to size, 5″ x 7″ which fits in a standard photo album. For years I’ve given my Dad collages this size as gifts so I just went ahead and set it aside for him. Hopefully he’ll like it!

~ Brigitte

Title: Dior Spring 2003
Size: 2.5″ x 3.5″
Status: Not Available

When I saw this little image in the January 2012 issue of Vogue I completely flipped out, “Kabuki clowns! Cirque de Soleil meets imperial Japan, say what!?” so even though I almost never do horizontal ATCs I had to make this one. It actually took me a really long time to make because I wanted to preserve as much of the original image (which was 2.25″ x 3.5″ to begin with, so nearly the size of the ATC) as possible, but still make it a collage and not just the picture glued to a backboard. I’m not sure where the flowers are from, (it’s an advertisement, that’s all I remember) but I like the way they work. In the end I’m pretty pleased with how it came out, I think it shows off the Dior pieces without overwhelming them, which is what I was going for at least.

~ Brigitte

Title: The Three Fates
Size: 2.5″ x 3.5″
Status: Not Available

I adore mythology so I end up thinking about it a lot when I’m making things. I made this ATC from three models and gave each one a half from another, it made me think of the Fates, the way they’re connected to each other, the metaphor of the thread, and of course it looks terribly odd. This collage didn’t sit on the desk as long as some have, but it was there for a few weeks while I was trying to figure out what to do with it. Even though they’re something I make for fun, if I get one started and can’t finish it I have a hard time letting it go, so when this was finished I breathed a little sigh of relief.

~ Brigitte