Creative Thinking

Club subject this week was Spring Flowers. After the high winds over the week, the pansies were all that was left in the garden, suitable for taking with me. I was pleased enough to finish it when I got home. Hope you enjoy looking.

Its funny the things you take for granted, and when they cease to be, you do not quite know what to do about it.
I have always, since way back, produced my own greetings cards. To start with, it was just for family and friends birthdays, and Christmas. It grew a bit when I started going to craft fairs and selling the cards, and although there was no great profit, I always enjoyed chatting to the customers and it kept me busy.
With the advent of the annual painting exhibitions, I have been able to sell quite a few more and they are a useful advertising tool. Finding the right paper and printing format has been a case of trial and error, but producing the images has been a simple case of scan in the image, adjust it slightly in Photoshop, add a border and print onto the card.
With the need to start planning for Wells in the summer, I have been looking at this years work to see what might print well. I buy white gift boxes and package the cards in a way which makes them suitable as gifts, or they can be framed separately for anyone who cannot afford to buy a painting, or just as a set to send out to friends, as they are a real bargain at £10 for a box of 8 A5 cards and envelopes. Every year I have sold more and more boxes, starting tentatively with half a dozen to see how they went and last year selling 20 boxes in the space of 5 days. This year I have ordered 30 boxes and we will see if we can sell them all!

There is, however, a problem! I have always painted on 'not' paper, and in the printing process the texture of the paper has never had a negative effect on the reproduced image. This year however I have bought quite a lot of 'rough' paper and produced some lovely images, but when I scanned them into the pc, the texture of the paper is quite evident and spoils the painting in the printed form.
I have spent ages in Photoshop trying to remove the texture of the painting to no avail, and thought that I would have to resort to re-using some of my older paintings for this years selection. Whilst making my mother's Mothering Sunday card, I reduced the size of the image to see if that would help, as you obviously lose detail when you do that, and then I enlarged the 'canvas' to get it back to the right size to print, without realising that it was set onto a coloured setting.
The resultant card set me thinking that this was an easy way to overcome the grain problem and with no more ado, the chosen images have been produced in this format, which I hope will sell well. If not, then friends and family will get a box each added to their Christmas parcel!!
Four of the eight resulting designs are below for you to see what you think.