New Postcards!

Woo-Hoo!  (or as my friend Linda would say Hoody-Who!....but she's in Hawaii and can't say it right now...and I'm not in Hawaii....weeps)
I have posted before that I belong to PostCrossing - a postcard trading site.  You send your postcards to a randomly generated address from their data base and you get one from someone in the world.  Easy peasy!
I live in an area that doesn't have many postcards, so I've taken to making my own using Photoshop Elements and my library 'o stuff...images and digital elements that I have collected over the last several years.
This is a big deal to me.  I have said before that I am a clinical depressive that struggles with my screwy biochemistry on  a daily basis.  I don't take medication, but use humor and purpose to get me through. Most people when they meet me would have no idea that my inner world tends to be grey.  What I mean by that is this; think of photos you may have seen of the landscape around Mt. St. Helen's after the eruption.  The landscape was barren and grey.  You could see outlines of what were once trees, boulders, streams, but everything was grey.  This is my inner world, and perhaps why in my quilting, painting, and everything else that I do, I LOVE  color.   I am also learning to love Zetti - a term that is now used to describe the characters and art collage techniques of Teesha Moore.  It is a composite people and creatures adorned with doodles, dots, and what nots. The rule - there are NO RULES.  It makes me what to pull my hair out sometimes!  Back to the postcards...

Mission San Juan Capistrano 

Pacific Grove - Near Monterey, California

Sunflower from my back yard

Desert in bloom - Joshua Tree National Park

Disclaimer!  All of the postcards I create are for my personal use only and not for sale, re-sale, or re-treading.  Now that is out of the way, I have used elements from Deviant Scrap - Color Splash (Hollie Harden) and Mermaids (Finecrafted Designs).  The photo overlays were from Christina Renee over at Scrapbook Graphics (glass negative overlays) and Meryl Bartho at Digital Scrapbook Place (old photo overlays).  The hardware and key - well thats Nicole Young over at DSP although the hardware can be found at almost every digital scrapbooking store.  The background for the San Juan Capistrano card came from CreateWings at After 5 Designs...it was from her Re-create 23 kit.  After I get my 4x6 prints back from Costco, I mount them on postcard backings that I get from The 2 Buds and I'm ready to go.

I have a ton of photos waiting for me to either scrapbook them or make them into postcards.  It has also made me look at the area in which I live a tad differently.  I know look at it and ask if what I am seeing would be interesting to someone else.  Our Mojave "river" is above ground right now, would that be a good picture?  What about "Mormon Rocks"?  How about the Harvey House in Barstow?    Places that I have had a minor passing interest now become more interesting when I think about showing someone in Taiwan, Russia, Czech Republic, England, Poland, or China something about where I live.    It also has challenged my own thoughts about where I live.  I now have to look for something wonderful in my little town in the desert; something that comes from my heart and not something that comes from a writer at the local Chamber of Commerce. (No offense to any Chamber members, but I am not trying to attract business here)

Am I proud of my efforts, why yes, I am.  Do I realize that they resemble each other, why yes, I do.  But my purpose here is to show a stranger where I live and what is beautiful about my home.  I am not entering a juried showcase of digital art.  Some times we just have to lighten up!

Have a wonderful day folks!  Find something wonderful in your hometown that you haven't paid that much attention to.  Someone else in the world could find it fascinating!