Altered Photos and Asian Dogs

This is my yellow pile of Happy New year postcards for a special swap I joined:

I took some photos before I sent them out.

I had lots of fun making these.

How I made these cards:

1. Cut out postcard sized card-stock
2. Covered them with Chinese news prints
3. Painted white gesso over the torn prints
4. Used a yellow wrapping paper with little silvery stains as the edge on one side
5. Painted and stained the whole surface with brownish watercolours
6. Printed the Chinese phrase Congratulations for getting rich (which is what you answer when somebody says Happy New year to you) on see through paper; vellum, from the computer.
7. Stamped all of the cards with my name tag
8. Added the dog and the vellum print with a glue stick
9. Taped the photos with small pieces of yellow tape

How I altered the dog photos

The photographs are all taken by me on my trip to Asia 2003. It was a dog theme project I wanted to do at the time (all of these dogs run around with no owners, but of course some of them had owners no doubt). I made a collage with the digital photos in Photoshop when I came back home, and then had that collage developed on photo paper. I think I sent some cards to friends and family, but some were left in the drawer so for this swap I dug them out!

1. Cut out the dogs from my collage photo
2. Held them a couple of second under running water in the kitchen
3. Altered them with sand paper in different grains (so fun!)
4. Colored the photos with acrylic paint in different shades
5. Sealed the surface with acrylic gel!

To alter photos is great fun. I want to try this in my art journal soon. I hope everyone likes the cards.

Here they are individually. Click on the ones you’d like to have a closer look at!