Sharing my art with my friends is my way of connecting with them. Creating something handmade takes so much time, and it is an expression of your love for the recipient. My housemartin design was inspired by spending a wonderful weekend with one of my closest friends, and watching the housemartins swoop around in the evening. In a previous blog post, I wrote about creating woodcut housemartins. I really liked the way these woodcuts turned out, and I thought that they would make a good printed image. I used the same vector image to create two rubber laser cuts. I stuck these to a postcard size piece of mountcard to hand print some postcards. They were a bit too 'perfect' so I created a background of hand drawn lines in grey - this looked really effective alongside the blue inks the housemartins were printed up in. Across the summer, when I was corresponding with friends, I used a batch of these hand printed postcards.
I realised that the elements of the two little housemartins formed a very attractive circular image. You can see a close up of the image I designed - the housemartins in a deep navy with grey insects in their beaks. My friend who I had been watching the housemartins with was about to have a significant birthday, so I decided to make a photo album for her featuring this image.
You can see the finished photo album above - photo albums are a brilliant project to do, and will definitely feature as a future blog post. The circular motif makes a very attractive focal point. I had a hilarious time selecting photos to go in it, as we have been friends for over 40 years - and it was also moving to see how much we have done together over the years. I'm hoping my friend gets as much pleasure using the photo album as I had making it.