stamp people (the baby)

It was bound to happen. The Stamp People series has a baby! Little bit of a quote from Charles Dickens.

stamp people (the siblings)

I thought I was getting my Stamp People obsession under control, but it reared its wild head again and dragged me down a tangent. This tangent resulted in a new crop of Stamp People inspired by each of my five siblings. The images posted here were all created from used postage stamps and old cooking magazines.

I'm the oldest of six, you see. My younger siblings are all unique and possess much more than one talent each. Such as my sister, the poet. My next sister, the chicken lady. My next sister, the sign language interpreter. My brother, the philosopher. And my youngest sister, the poster designer. None of them can be captured in just one image. So it's a safe bet that there will soon be alternate versions of the sibling series. Such as the last image I posted below, which was also inspired by my first sister.

It may be a while before I get back onto the main road of traditional etegami. But not too long. I think.

more box-card etegami-collages

etegami sheep leaping on a card cut from a cookie box

etegami sea turtle swimming on a card cut from a rice cracker box

The Box-Card Etegami-Collage Challenge closed at the end of October, but it was such a fun project, and I still have plenty of product boxes that can be made into cards, so I keep making more. You can see some of my etegami-collages along the right sidebar of the challenge blog.

art in the margins

The Art in the Margin of Sheet Stamps

Better than a Hot Water Bottle in the Winter

Playing the Biwa (lute) with a Zucchini

Do other countries have sheet stamps, like we do in Japan, that have gorgeous art in the margins? I've saved stamp sheet margins for years, long after the stamps were used up. The margins have the same coating on the back as the stamps do, and it gets sticky if you lick it. Sometimes I cut out the margin art and use it to decorate the outside of my mailing envelopes.

Though I've often used cancelled postage stamps to make etegami-collages, the corrugated-cardboard-etegami-collages shown here (yes, my experiments do get complicated) are the first etegami I've ever made with stamp sheet margin art. In the first one, I used a margin-art panda and combined it with my painting of a tangerine. In the second, I used a margin-art lute and combined it with my painting of a zucchini with a stem that looked a bit like a finger. The second one is missing words, so technically it doesn't qualify as an etegami....

the harvest moon

Fox and the Harvest Moon. Hand-painted Etegami fox glued to a card cut from the cover of a gift box of Japanese sweets.

the sandstorm

This is a fennec-- a desert fox. I painted the fennec on a washi card, then cut it out and glued it to a card cut from a food product box with a pattern that made me think of sand blowing in the desert.
When I was little, my mother used to sing a song about the Sandman to help me fall asleep at night. I have several friends who are struggling with insomnia right now, and I dedicate this etegami-collage to them. 

a week of thanksgiving

 

I promised my nephew that I would post a series of "thankful" etegami for one week on Facebook. I decided to fulfill that promise with etegami-collages, so that they could do double-duty as my own contributions to the box-card etegami challenge I am currently hosting.  

I made #1 (rooster crowing) and #2 (early morning newspaper delivery) because I am thankful that I woke up this morning. I'm planning to do a spin-off series with these two, called "The Sounds that Morning Makes."  I made #3 to express my delight in the coming of autumn.  I made #4 because watching some people peck at the keyboard with one finger makes me so grateful that I was taught how to type properly. I made #5  because I'm thankful for being able to live in Japan. I made #6 because I'm thankful that there are always things to take delight in, no matter how hard life is sometimes. I made #7 because I take delight in the form and function of dragonflies. I made #8 to express my thankfulness in being able to see colors.

etegami made from gift boxes

etegami bee on a candy box card

Japan has two gift-giving seasons, one in the summer and one in the winter. But that's just the tip of the iceberg of the myriad occasions on which social rules require the giving of gifts. Proper etiquette also requires a response from the receiver, in some cases a return gift of 1/3 to 1/2 the value of the original gift! The customs differ from region to region, and in these days when company employees and civil servants are being transferred frequently from one area of Japan to another, the rules of gift-giving-and-returning can be very confusing even for a native Japanese. I don't worry much about rules, but I do make it a habit (from the heart) to send hand-painted etegami in response to every gift I receive, and sometimes even in place of a gift that might be expected from me if people didn't already assume I was ignorant of such customs.

Many years ago,  a woman in my etegami group showed me a thank-you card she had received from a woman to whom she had sent a box of sweet melons. The woman had simply cut a postcard-sized chunk from the cardboard box the melons had been packed in, being careful to cut it from a part of the box printed with an image of a melon. Then she wrote "thank you" with a permanent black marker, addressed it, stuck a postage stamp on it, and mailed it to my friend. It was simple, it was creative and considerate, and most important of all, my friend was utterly delighted with it. This was my introduction to etegami made from gift boxes.

Since then, whenever possible, I make my thank-you cards from the boxes that the gifts are packaged in. Especially if they are pretty boxes, or printed with a brand logo that is prized all over Japan. Fortunately, there are a lot of pretty boxes in Japan, and I never have a shortage of material for making box cards.

My own personal rule is to add an etegami element to every box card. To the flowery box card (top) that I cut out of a box from a famous Hokkaido candy company, I added a bee that I had painted on a washi card, then cut out and glued to the box card. I glued an etegami shrimp to the light brown card embossed in gold letters with the name of a famous shrimp cracker maker in Nagoya. To the red card that I cut from the box of a well-known Chinese dumpling maker in Tokyo, I added an etegami dragon. Each of these cards were made for the giver of the treats that came in those boxes.

etegami shrimp on a shrimp crackers box card

etegami dragon on a chinese dumpling box card

Because these box cards already have printing on them, I chose not to add any words of my own. The message of delighted gratitude that I want to convey is clear enough, I think.  But if there is enough open space so as not to make the card too cluttered, I might add a quote or words of my own. Like the cookie box card below, to which I added an etegami albatross and a Robert Frost quote. The body of the albatross is placed right over the cookie brand name because I wanted a clean "canvas" to write words of my own. I think I should have spread the writing further to the left and right side of the card. But I need to remind myself of the etegami motto: "Awkward is okay; in fact Awkward is great!"

etegami albatross on a cookie box card

like playing with paper dolls

I've blogged many times about recycling etegami, but my motivation for doing so is not necessarily the same each time. Sometimes I like the image, but am disappointed with the writing, so I cut out the image, glue it to a new card, and redo the words. Sometimes I use faded or damaged etegami in making a paper pulp to produce new washi for new cards.

And sometimes, like today, after scanning the original etegami for my records, I cut out the image, glue it to a fresh background, and put the same, or similar, words in another language to reach a wider audience. Only the final version actually gets sent in the mail. The earlier versions only remain in digital form.

The words on each of these cards have the same meaning. It's the old Japanese saying: After a victory, tighten the cord of your helmet. In other words, don't let the euphoria of victory make you careless. I drew this bike helmet long ago to illustrate a short story a friend wrote about a motorcycle accident, and decided to turn the illustration into an etegami. Then I took it apart and made a new version of it in English. And then I did it again with a different background.

It kind of reminds me of the paper dolls I played with as a child. I remembered this morning that I used to draw and cut out my own paper dolls and design the clothes I would make them wear. Probably lots of children did the same. Maybe my etegami play a similar role for me in my old(er) age. Today I'll put you against a blue background with German words, I say to my image, How would you like that? Am I weird?

how does a cow moo in french?

For a change-of-pace, I like making etegami-collages, where I stick something extra (often fabric or washi of a completely different texture-- but this time a postage stamp), to a traditional hand-painted etegami. I have a special interest in postage stamps, and this cow stamp from France begged to be used in an etegami.

september give-away (etegami collages)

Snail with haiku by Issa

"Dust of Snow" by Robert Frost

Common theme in Japanese horror tales

From my Proverbial Cow series

Can you believer it's already time for the September give-away? I picked out four of my etegami-collages, one each for four randomly selected winners. Each one is from a different series, and each is an original etegami-collage constructed with painted etegami images and washi paper backgrounds, glued onto re-purposed stiff paper backings.  If you want to be considered for the give-away, please indicate this clearly in a comment below.  I will chose four names on September 8. As usual, I can't promise which work will go to which winner, but it would be helpful if you indicated your preference(s) anyway.   

Note: This give-away is limited to followers of this blog. If you aren't already following, there are three easy ways you can do this, and they can be found in the right-hand sidebar of this page. If you take this opportunity to newly follow/subscribe, please tell me which method you used.