'Home Sweet Home' Artist Trading Card Swap

I recently took part in the Very Berry Artist Trading Card swap. The idea is to make a textile card, 3.5" by 2.5", to send to someone else taking part, and then you also receive a card yourself, from a mystery partner. The theme this time was 'Home Sweet Home', and I was making for Simi, from Buttons and Paint. Simi left some information about the kind of thing she liked:

Likes/dislikes: I like abstract, contemporary art. I love bright colours. I'm a big fan of all types of textile art techniques. I love seeing work that is typical of the artist themselves...

I kind of struggled a bit thinking of how I could interpret 'Home Sweet Home' in an abstract or contemporary way. In fact I struggled generally to avoid ideas which felt a bit twee, and therefore, I thought, most likely very much not up Simi's street. So in the end I decided to go a little off piste and think about animal homes. After considering snails and hermit crabs (both very tempting!), I had a look through one of our children's books to try and find some more inspiration- 'A house is a house for me'

Find it here on Amazon if you're interested.

It's a lovely rhyming book about all the amazing, different kinds of houses within the animal kingdom. The illustrations are beautiful and it's perfect for reading aloud with young children - and for them to try and come up with their own additional ideas for animal houses too. It also seemed perfect for inspiration for this theme - and it was! There is a lovely picture of whales in there - 'Whales need an ocean or sea', and as soon as I saw it, I knew I wanted to create a card with whales in their 'home'. So my card is very much based on the picture in the book, and here it is...

You can see I changed the theme words around to fit my whales and their home!

I'm not sure I've ever made anything on this scale before, it's hard to appreciate just how small these cards are until you see one in the flesh. But here's mine being held for a bit of perspective...

And I gave it a simple patchwork back too...

So off it went to Simi last week and I'm hoping she'll like it. I feel it very much hits the last part of her 'likes/dislikes' -

'I love seeing work that is typical of the artist themselves...'

After my initial worries over what to make, I really enjoyed the whole experience. And then, to top it off,  I received my beautiful card last week from the lovely Stacey at Bakercourt...

Stacey captured such a gorgeous, colourful, whimsical feel with the theme, and of course colour and whimsy suit me perfectly! And it's really difficult to see on my photo, but there are tiny, glitzy Czech glass, seed beads sewn all around the edge, which are incredibly effective, and which must have taken a lot of patience. You can see them better in Stacey's post here. So thank you very much Stacey, it's perched on the shelf next to my computer now, and makes me smile every time I glance upwards wondering what words to write next - which happens a lot!

I'm sure it's a swap I'll try and take part in again, I have a feeling creating tiny textile cards could become slightly addictive!

Sally.

PS If you'd like to see more of the cards created by everyone taking part then head to Flickr - here. And I've also just had another thought - I can link up with Carie over at Space for the Butterflies with her 'What we're reading' post - since there is most definitely a children's book within my post, and it's very much one I'd recommend, even apart from providing inspiration for ATC Swaps! Always lots of great book ideas from Carie, so well worth a visit.