These have been in the works since @crafty-becky sent me a bunch of winter bird stickers in a past swap. They may be my holiday cards this year, or just go out in swap packages during winter.
In an attempt to blend the stickers in, I made a mess with various stencils, handmade stamps, and markers on and around them. I pieced together often inappropriate found phrases (inspired by Effin Birds and the overall feel of 2020, though there wasn’t very strong language in the book I’m pulling text from) and got a little too ink-happy with some, so they’re not as easy to read as I had hoped.
The clean, crisp aesthetics of most handmade cards is not in my crafting wheelhouse …but at the other side of the spectrum these kinda look like Santa vomited… So I’m adding a coat of gesso to do some cleaner final layers. I don’t know if I want to do that with all of them, but they still look unfinished to me. Maybe they’ll become gift tags instead, not sure yet. Your thoughts?
(I did make some normal message ones too, since honestly we’ve just got to be kind to one another this year. The whole project is mainly to amuse myself )
Exactly! It was a really weird thing to find, mixed in with various encouraging sayings, and there’s really no reuse for it if not with a woodpecker. Apparently it had the same meaning as “keep a stiff upper lip”, so why was it even a necessary saying, if not to plant the seed for innuendos of the future?
Google Ngram shows it as being most commonly used from the 1870s-1930s, with a big resurgence after 2000…probably in a very different variety of books!
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