Haiku ATC Swap

Lenna, my lovely and creative friend in Florida, has done it again. Found a gorgeous new theme for her latest swap on her Creative Swap site. It's for ATCs and it has to have a haiku on it, either on the front or the back. A haiku is a form of Japanese poem, where the first line has to have 5 syllables, the second 7 and the last one 5 again. If you register for the swap Lenna will give you a very helpful PDF will all the necessary information. You can either write your own haikus or use someone else's (provided it's copyright free, of course!). I produced my own haikus all inspired by my frequent visits to graveyards. I made the 4 as seen below (one extra for Lenna) and then felt I wanted to have one for myself. I have a little box where I keep left-over pieces from other projects that I particularly liked and for myself I finally used the fabric-paper collage piece seen above with a little face peering out from it. The haiku reads:

dark ghosts roam the earth

hunting for the shining light

hidden in their souls

For most of the cards I used the last piece of an Italian themed paper-fabric collage which I had been treasuring for ages, for some special project and these ATCs proved to be it. I had only enough for 3 ATCs so for the other one I used one of my grave photographs (see my other blog on West Linton graveyard). The haiku text was made with my Dymo writer. For the above ATC it reads:

long forgotten souls

breath no longer their domain

life extinct death reigns

many lives gone far

no more dancing in the light

farewell tragedies

peace among the graves

battles lost and won and now

the resurrection

This card was made from an actual photograph I took in West Linton graveyard and the haiku reads:

a graveyard in sun

dark and light in life and death

an eternity

Ink is Dark

I've finished another page for my blank board book. At the moment I'm leaving all the pages loose till I have enough to fill the book so I can arrange them best, with suitable pages which compliment each other together. I'll just keep making them and enjoying the process.

This page is based on a haiku I wrote recently, inspired by the fact that really our modern world would be impossible without the written word, whether that is on paper or on a computer screen. Of course as a librarian this fact was never lost on me, anyway!

The haiku reads:

Ink is dark and true

A pen is a mightly weapon

Black words rule the World

The background for this piece is muslin (or calico in U.K.) sprayed with a variety of colours of Moon Shadow Mist. I then added a piece of fabric featuring books (from Equilter), at the right, which was stitched down in the lines separating the books. The Haiku was stamped on plain muslin, using individual letters and sepia coloured ink. At the bottom I stamped Alphastamps Penmanship stamp using black Versacraft ink. I added an image from Alphastamps Chalkboard paper collage sheet, layered it up with blue felt (also from Alphastamps) and stitched this down in position. I added scrolls from Self-Adhesive felt scrol in black.

In the middle I added the words Modern Sunday School, which come from an actual Sunday School book and were applied with Diamond Glaze which was also added to the top.

I stamped the pen (from Alphastamps) on a transparency using Blue Staz-On and stitched it on at the left side.

Finally I added two self-adhesive flowers from Wild Saffron Felt Flower Stickers (also from Alphastamps)