Chirp, Chirp!

Although the temperature in New York dropped 10 degrees (from the 60s to the 50s) in one day, I'm still optimistic about the arrival of spring and want to share with you a few spring-ish cards I made a while ago.


I had just gotten the Hero Arts bird stamps I had been wanting for a long time and was excited to try them out.






I used three stamps for this card: the bird stamp, a fantastic huge tree trunk stamp and my beloved branch from Impress Rubber Stamps.

I had also bought a street lamp stamp that I had been lusting after, and thought that even though the proportions aren't entirely realistic (I think the bird would have to be three feet tall!), it's cute. I heat embossed the street lamp and was glad that the details showed up nicely.

Here is the third of the set that I made.

For the below card, I used another style of branch stamp (oh, I love my tree/branch stamps so!), upending it to make it into the trunk of a tree. I then repurposed a stamp that was originally intended as a cloud image. With a bit of green ink, the cloud stamp turned into the leaves part of the tree.

Though a country be sundered, hills and rivers endure;
And spring comes green again to trees and grasses
Where petals have been shed like tears
And lonely birds have sung their grief.
...After the war-fires of three months,
One message from home is worth a ton of gold.
...I stroke my white hair. It has grown too thin
To hold the hairpins any more.

Tu Fu (c. 750)
trans. Witter Bynner