Hello Friends! I've been exploring various websites, and this one (ATC's for all) had the most immediate sign in, so I went for it! A lovely person called Suzi is hosting this, and she does this every year to promote the importance of bees. Here is what she wrote about the swap:
"At this time of the year, when everything is springing back to life, we should all be mindful of the importance of bees. Without them, we would not survive for very long. Each year, I plant a variety of vegetables and flowers, so that the bees will also have a food supply. I even have a new spot to put my latest bee houses, close to the garden. Nature is just so awesome!
Some interesting facts about bees:
The honey bee has been around for millions of years.
It is the only insect that produces food eaten by man.
A honey bee can fly for up to 5 miles, and as fast as 15 miles per hour!
The average worker bee produces about 1/12th a teaspoon of honey in her lifetime.
A honey bee visits 50 to 100 flowers during a collection trip.
A colony of bees consists of 20,000 to 60,000 honey bees and one queen.
The bee’s brain is oval in shape and only about the size of a sesame seed.
The queen bee can live up to 5 years and is the only bee that lays up to 2500 eggs per day."
THIS ATC PROCESS:
I started with an idea to create a graphic that could be turned into a stamp. I seem to be all about making stamps these days. I thought maybe I could do some kind of mosaic using hexagons, like a honey comb. I wasn't happy with the stamp. That was disappointing.
I wondered if maybe the graphic could be repurposed as a cut out collage. And so that's what I did. I redesigned it by connecting some of the hexagons to make fewer sections to cut out of magazines on the laser cutter. I searched through magazines for appropriate colour blocked text mostly. But there was one that turned out really nice with a stripey background, and this one I saved for a gift for the host.
At the end of it all, I thought all this text looks really busy - you sort of have to hunt a little for the design. I was happy to engage the viewer that way. Thinking perhaps "busy" was an appropriate word for this bee work, I pasted it as a simple sentiment at the bottom.
You're invited you to join me on this merry journey, as I dive back into the world of book and paper arts. Every creative person needs a hobby, or 14, regardless of how artistic the main gig is. But don't let us kid ourselves. Eventually the shelves fill up with enough good stuff that it really should get into the hands of others instead of stuck in a private hoard. And well, there are so many lovely sites for artists swaps. So let's go!
