Happy 4th of July!
Idea
It was pretty easy this month. For the 4th of July, I decided to do a parade with the mice doing different things. The last time I did a flag was the very first pop-up of the month I made for Ma Wardinkle in 2013.
July 2013 Card
I made a list of things in a parade and made some sketches before coming up with a list of items that could fit onto the card.
Design
The design is pretty simple (like last month. Am I getting in a rut?). There are three levels of parallelograms for the mice in the parade, and then two more for the spectators. For a bit of variety, the first three are at slightly different locations. Those are attached to the main part of the card, and then the spectators are attached to the float and the marching band. Here’s a side view of the card showing the parallelograms.
Side view showing parallelograms
Since it was a rather simple design, I decided to add a pivot to the mice on the float to make it a bit more interesting. We’ve seen the pivot before in other cards.
Pivot for mice in the wagon
For the backgrounds, I used chalk pastels, applied fixative, and then printed the text. It didn’t print very well, and adding more fixative didn’t help, but it almost made it look intentional. – Oh, wait, it was intentional. The fireworks were drawn with pastel pencils, then I added some glitter. I’m not very happy with the glitter, but I think it’s better than without. Maybe using glitter glue, or cutting double-sided tape into thin strips would have been better.
The mice are all drawn by hand with pen and ink, and then colored with colored pencils. Everything was cut by hand and attached to the base. To help the supports blend in with the base, I used colored pencils to try to match the gray pastels.
The band sports the Virginia Tech colors and uniforms. One of the spectators is wearing a hat that I usually wear. And a very small dog.
I think this is the first time the mice have worn pants.
Cover
I printed a clip art flag very lightly as a guide, then used colored pencils to fill it in. For the background, it is also some colored pencils.
Build
- 9” x 6”
- The base was Strathmore 300 Bristol 100lb
- The mechanism is on index paper, and illustrated with Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pens