Celebrating 10 Years: HLM Cardswap

For the 10th year in a row, the 6 Degrees of HLM Cardswap was a huge success! Thanks to the 29 participants, we had a robust year of card-making, with creativity and fun times.

Remember to click on the photos for a closer view!

Starting with the Big Picture, here are 290 cards--wow!!!

Siri, a loyal card swap participant from previous years, actually loves the swap so much that she decided to arrange a contingent of the swap in her home town of State College, PA. She recruited six of her crafty friends, and they got together at a local makery to have an Art Party of their very own, on the same day we had our Card Swap work party here in Colorado! Here are some great photos of their time together, and their cards are below:

Here are Tricia's cards:

Siri used some old international postage stamps as her inspiration: 

 Katie O. did some lovely watercolors:

Erica used watercolor too, but a totally different style:

Each of Bec's cards was a unique acrylic & ink painting:

 Amy F. used layers and collaged her cards:

And Amy B. mixed and matched her styles to create 10 unique designs:

Siri gathered them up and sent them all to me in one box. It was a glorious mail day to receive 70 cards in the mail all in one package!

This year's themes were "ten" and "line." If people found inspiration in the themes at all, they were all unique and wonderful.

Back in Fort Collins, Sue participated once again, using her corrugated cardboard to play on the line theme, and each flower has ten petals:

Shari also played on both themes, with ten birds placed on two clothes lines:

Katie J. used some old slides from her mom's hall closet collection to create interactive cards. She also made her ten cards at the time that she had just given birth to her third child, and got them in before the deadline! I think she deserves extra kudos for that. 

This was Orly's first time in the swap and she turned some of her organic "intuitive" paintings into prints:

Mia used a stamping technique (looks like potato stamps to me) to create three unique designs, which she embellished with thin black ink.

Mary Lu has participated as long as we've known each other, and despite huge life transition, she always delivers something special:

When I delivered Marge's cards to her last year, she was so excited to do it again. You can see that she used several decorative papers with lines as part of their design.

Gaye took photographs of flowers, and found the orange one to be particularly painterly:

Haley used both themes, using ten lines of paper to create her cards:

These are my cards, and I drew six different designs based on the theme of ten. I googled "ten" and brainstormed ways to turn the results into cards one might actually send.

I've known Cydney for four years and finally she had the time (in her last semester of college?) to participate in the swap. She used lines to graphically design a butterfly. She also printed a lot of extras, so some of you got 11 cards instead of ten this year--a fun bonus!

Claudia used line as well, and wove what seem like hundreds of thin lines of paper together:

Laura challenged herself to ONLY use triangles. Her outcome is stunning and also uses the line theme in the negative space:

Andrea's first time in the swap was exciting, something she's not ever done before. She was inspired by a card I made for the 2012 swap and used tons of fun supplies in my studio at the work party to make the design her own, incorporating the line theme. She went from no idea of what to do to twelve cards in 4 hours. Amazing!

Jessie drew this adorable recipe design, based on the number 6. I discovered a month after I received her cards that she loved the theme, six. I told her it was ten and we both had a good laugh.

As for our other out-of-towners, Jenn has moved to Germany and she immediately thought of sheet music when she heard what the themes were. Ten lines in treble and bass clef! She and her 1-year old found some old music, watercolored them, then cut-em-up and collaged them into new music/love designs. 

Speaking of international participants, Ambra from Toronto also participated. We had a Skype work party after the in-person work party was over, and you can see the original collage that she turned into prints for her cards. Unbelievably, her first batch got lost in the mail. Oh no!! So she made a whole nother batch and they arrived JUST IN TIME:

Jennifer lives in Sebastopol, California, and when she heard the theme ten, she thought of the nursery rhyme Ten Little Monkeys. She used a mix of crayons and fabric to create a scene where that cute little story might take place.

This year provided another first for the HLM card swap: our first kid participant! Bronwyn is Jennifer's daughter, aged 8. She has participated in helping her mom make cards in previous years, but seemed ready to make the commitment to doing ten of her own cards this year. She came through with ten unique drawings:

Anne lives in Seattle and used a collection of old European train tickets as her inspiration. She incorporated line by pin-pricking lines into the brown paper, creating a sense of movement and travel and punching the travel tickets.

Kristin lives in Longmont, CO, and each of her colorful flowers were like mosaics. Clearly lots of TLC in each card. 

Last but not least, my step-mom Nancy lives in Portland. She played on the recent coloring phenomenon Zentangles to create "tentangles." She hand drew these geometric designs that played on the number ten:

Here's a fun last photo, of the swapping day with my swap buddies Haley and Harper. 

Thank you again to everyone who participated. Please share this blog post far and wide, and use our hashtag anytime you refer to it. #hlmcardswap

I hope you'll join again next year. 💙