Two FREE Holiday Printable and E-Cards!

'Tis the season for giving!

My holiday gift to you: 
Two festive collage card designs for you to use for free! Because who doesn't love a little something goofy (and strange) and totally unique amidst all your regular holiday imagery? Both designs are 100% designed by me, half collaged by hand and half digitally.

Print them out, save them to your computer, add your name, and send them out by email. Or, print the e-cards smaller and use them as gift tags! Whatever works best for you.

I'm personally emailing these out to some people who live abroad or are hard to get a hold of, and hand making the rest of my cards using recycled magazine bits and pieces. If I come up with any good designs in the rest of my card making this year, I could scan them and offer them as free printables next year - if you all like free printables/sendables and want more!

Above, you have the 'Fala lalala" design with two cheerful carollers serenading you and/or your card recipients. Below, you have the Lil Festive Yeti celebrating the seasonal precipitation (if you live north enough).

HOW TO USE:

Printables (below):
• Click on the images below and the full size file should open up for you in your web browser. Right click (or control click) to save them to your computer.
• Print the file onto an 8.5" x 11" regular printer paper.
• Cut the printed paper in half (horizontally). There is a subtle little line on each to help guide you.
• Fold your cards in half, so that the image is on the front and my 'signature' is on the back.

Each print should give you two cards with these files.

E-Cards (above):
• Click on the images below and the full size file should open up for you in your web browser. Right click (or control click) to save them to your computer.
• Open the file into your favourite photo editor and add the names and any personalized message you'd like onto the images.
• Save As a jpeg (technically pdf or png would also work)
• Attach the file to your emails as you send out holiday greetings!


Printable versions:

I hope you enjoy these designs, let me know in the comments if you plan to use one!

Happy Holidays to your and yours! xo

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Note:

These cards are free for you to use, print, or send out for the holidays. They are not for you to edit, to re-distribute, to use for commercial purposes, or to claim as your own.  Please do not remove my credit from the images. Thanks!

Gallery Chat: Privacy in a Society that Shares

I think we can all agree on the multiplicity of pros and cons of the internet. I am far from the first to write a post about the fine line between wanting to share and simultaneously wanting to hold onto my privacy. Lately I find the sharing unnerving though. Specifically, I am uncomfortable with the idea that individuals who are otherwise no longer present in my life can have access to my online content. People who have for all intents and purposes erased themselves from my life could easily stumble upon details about my work, my romantic life, my going-out habits, my schooling. For some reason this feels much more intrusive than the idea of complete strangers catching glimpses of me and my doings.

Though I focus primarily on sharing my art work or other art-related posts online, I love visuals. I swoon at photos of my heartmate and me. I audibly react to photos of my dog even if he is sitting right next to me. I keep my photo books on my bedside table for easy access. I want to photocopy these and throw them off an 80 story building and shout from the rooftops about how happy they make me.... But I also don't want to do this at all. In fact, almost equally, I want to keep these little treasures to myself, hoard them like a magpie in my nest away from anyone who doesn't need to know. Because most people don't need to.

Even my art posts are so personal. There are few things more intimate, truly, than sharing your art with the world. Not all of it of course; some of it is just gibberish in the form of visual art, like when you are trying to express yourself but your words come out gooey and turn upside down on your tongue. Generally, though, my visual art comes from somewhere deep and indescribable. It is a part of me I can only share through this mode. Yet I feel less private about my art work. Maybe I have become accustomed to sharing it openly all throughout art school and growing up with the internet. Maybe it is because I can leave it to you - the viewer - to interpret as you will. There's much more room for individual understanding and personalization for the audience - each art work is a piece of me, but you will respond to it with pieces of you. A photo of me and my friends is just about me (and maybe them, too), and you will not respond with much more than a double tap or a nod of acknowledgement.

It's a funny balance that I have yet to really find a comfortable place in. I fluctuate between feeling very open and very shy. Which I guess is ok, too.

On that note - I hope you enjoy my collage piece about wanting privacy/feeling shy. This collage was made specifically to accompany this written piece. I am trying out something new - "Gallery Chat", where I write about specific topics that are on my mind and create a visual piece to go along with it. I want to write more, and make more.

Where do you find the balance between over-sharing and good-sharing? What do you keep in mind when you decide whether or not to post a personal photo?

Art Fart: A Celebration of Women

I made this collage on International Women's day. You may recognize it if you follow my personal instagram account! It was a lovely morning of meditation on women and all the beautiful things it means to be a woman, and a celebration of these things. Powerful. Present. Embracing our bodies. Causing ripples in the water, in the world we move through. Having impact. To me, this is what comes naturally to women, but is so often stifled - or rather, there are so many attempts to stifle these things - by the expectations placed upon us, the definitions fabricated to describe us, the double standards imposed on us, the misconceptions that surround us. I was really thrilled to see so much movement and action and discussion occurring on this day, and all other days, about what it means to be a woman in this day and age, and what it should mean to be a woman in the future.

I think of my grandmother (who is pictured in the background of this piece!) who wore jeans before women even really wore pants. Who got her Master's degree and worked and fostered children, on top caring for her own 4. My grandmother who learned how to build a house with her own two hands. Who was a passionate advocate for homeless youth, the environment, and more. My grandmother who made art and let an enthusiastic, young Katia cut some of her flowers from her garden to make bouquets when I would visit. Man, was she ever rad.

Who do you think of, when you think of amazing women in your life?

Art Fart: Father Christmas

This summer I have been doing some work for the Toronto-based band, Father Christmas. They rock and were fantastic to work with! I really dig the visual style they go for and felt totally at home in the images I made for them. For the posters, front man Kyle gave me a simple directive; "make something weird". Don't mind if I do!

First I worked on a set of logos for the band - text and illustrations, one palm-tree version and a cactus one. We tried a few ideas and landed on a hand written text style, and a matching sensibility for the illustrations. I am so pleased with how it turned out, and it looks great on their t-shirts and pins which I will share a photo of soon!

The band are starting their East Coast tour this weekend, and asked me to make a few posters for those shows too - it was a treat to use the logo I'd just finished in the designs to debut it online.

(How great of a magazine find are those little naked gold people? I seriously want to make a bronze necklace pendant of them... wouldn't that be rad?)

They even asked me to include my boob illustrations in the poster - so fun to have a project that allows me to combine the various things I love to make! The collages were made mostly by hand, then scanned in and positioned with the text and logo details.

Check out Father Christmas's bandcamp page, and their facebook page for the tour details!
They've also just released a new single that I'm super into, you can listen to it here.

xo

Art Fart: The Art of Collaboration

Competition doesn't come very naturally to me. I was never a sports person - I hated being pushed to compete and WIN. I liked gymnastics - competing with only myself to do a better cartwheel than before. But I quit when the gym coaches insisted, at the ripe age of 6, that I start competing. Of course, it feels good to win, but I was a sensitive child and never liked the way people got mean when they were stressed to win. I remember my cousins having snow ball fights, playing man hunt, soccer, badminton, and having everyone get mad at me when I missed the ball or let down the team. I could never handle it.

Now as a grown up, I can certainly handle it. I've been known to get pretty competitive myself when I play cards against my fella or during a family game of Taboo. But there's a part of me that still doesn't love it. The same goes for the art world, which I'm sure we can all imagine or know is very competitive. And I haaaaaaate that about it. I want to collaborate, to work together, to support each other, to be friends (lol). Of course I'm not alone in this, but my overwhelming feeling is that the art world sees collaboration as a vehicle for personal success - work with someone who will help elevate you, as opposed to a pure enjoyment of the process of working together.

Maybe I'm wrong? Maybe this is just my experience. Maybe it's the art scene in my city?

I recently had a contrasting experience. I collaborated with my friend, Hannah Spector, who I met when we were both living in Paris. We were introduced by a mutual friend and later adventured to a Mexican Wrestling bar together. That's the extent of how we know each other, but we've kept in touch (thanks, internet) and both like collage and word-y things. We decided to collaborate and sent each other packages of cut up bits, papers, materials, for the other person to put together and compose. This was my result! Something more abstract than my usual, but I love it and had so much fun with this collaboration. It was such a delight to open up the package that Hannah had sent me and find an explosion of googly eyes and a parking ticket, among other things.

This is the kind of art I want to be doing. I want to work with others, I want to build community, I want art making to be more than just about me, sitting at a desk, doing my thing. Is this a bit idealistic? Maybe. I'll figure that out as I go, I suppose!

What is your experience with competitiveness vs. collaboration in the art world?

Art Fart: Collage Sketches

Normally, sketches are associated with quick pencil drawings and doodles intended to get abstract ideas from your head down on piece of paper, or to practice certain things. Then, perhaps, to work out the details of the idea more clearly and develop a more finalized image - depending on who you are and what your process is. I never really thought of doing collage sketches until I felt like I had cornered myself into, well, a corner. I was putting too much pressure on myself to create "finished" work and to readily have new material to post on my social media and to continue promoting myself. Yuck! That's not a good corner to be in - it is paralyzing, frustrating, and boring. Especially when I also use social media to get inspired - the instagram "corner" is both an inspiring and stifling zone, which is a very conflicting way to feel.

So I decided to loosen up, keep it abstract, and throw some colours and textures and shapes together that I liked. To make for the sake of making, to explore composition as an abstract series of shapes. I also tried doing doodle squiggles on separate paper, then cutting those out and collaging them in with the rest - which turned out to be really fun.

Sketching is good for experimenting without fear of ruining a piece, for discovering new techniques and ideas, and building a visual dialogue between your inner self and your physical output. Why limit 'sketching' to pencil or pen? I'm trying to use my sketchbooks more often for my own creative development and well-being (and for fun!).

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Do you keep a sketchbook? What medium do you experiment with?
If you share your sketches on your blog or social media, leave a link in the comments so I can check them out! You can see more of mine on my instagram.


ps. my sketches usually have words paired with them. Here are the words attached to these three, from left to right: burnt toast on a rainy day, not beyoncé's lemonade, cottage cheese by the sea.

Art Fart: Collage and Words

Recently I've enjoyed making this series of collages combined with some black out poetry! I love writing, I've always loved writing (hence the blogging!), but I haven't been quite confident enough to share it with others. This collage + black out poetry happened by accident and I'm so glad it did! It's just toying with some word play, but I feel like it's a step in a really exciting direction.

I have also been trying to include my own drawings into my collages - hence the odd sea-shell-y blobs I've included in two of these. It feels even more "mine" with my doodles thrown in.

The world is full of sunshine today and weather so warm I don't need a jacket - that feels SO GOOD. I feel so inspired, and excited by the opportunities ahead to create art and simply enjoy the process.

How is the start to your week?

Art Fart: for Bowie

Oh Bowie.

No words or artwork or sentiments of any kind will suffice to express the loss the entire world is feeling - even as a relatively moderate fan such as myself.

I love the Bowie universe, and respect, admire, and appreciate the things he did in his life. He was an unrelenting creator, a maker of wonderful new things that really shook up the world. I love his aesthetic, I love his music, I love his attitude; I even love his ugly red Ziggy mullet. I donned it myself this past Halloween for my Bowie costume. I am very sad to see him go, and so awe-struck at the brilliant coincidence (which, I suspect, might not have been a coincidence at all) of releasing his latest and last album just 2 days before his death. Incredible 'til the end!
 
Bowie, thank you for the weirdness, and thank you for the magic and the sparkle.

xo

Art Fart: Touch me in the Sunrise

It's been a sick week for me - a mountain of kleenex later and I am still a snot factory (is that TMI? my bad). The plus side is that I get to stay home (so as to not infect the general public) and sleep and make things. It's been a long while since I have been able to sit and concentrate on art for hours and hours without interruption. I have had some of the ideas in this image, mainly the hand pattern, for a while and I'm glad I finally went for it.

I also recently acquired a whole pile of vintage playboy magazines which I am really excited to be using - the content is sometimes hilarious, and often quite beautiful. Something about hazy, gentle nudes is a breath of fresh air. There is something nice and subtle about vintage playboy shots, even if they are somewhat pornographic.

Anyway. I hope you don't mind some boobies.

xo

Art Fart: Eagle Woman

I've been focusing on trying to create landscapes and scenes in my collages. So here is my Eagle Woman in her natural habitat.

Happy Monday everyone!

NEW: Collage Print Shop!

Hello friends! Surely you've seen me post my collage work on the blog or on instagram. I'm really excited to finally have versions that I can put out there, that others can hold in their hands and put on their walls.

So I opened a little online shop! Right now it only has prints of 4 of my favourite collages, but it will be expanding in the future. There will one day be originals and all sorts of other goodies. Stay tuned, and take a peek at the shop when you have a minute - I'd really appreciate it :)


Which print is your favourite? 

Check out the shop here!

Art Fart: She's a Dreamcatcher

I have a great interest in circles. They are probably my favourite shape - to use in art, to look at in art, to think about in terms of the various cycles our lives and worlds are made of. I definitely tend towards them in my art making, and I particularly enjoy doodling, designing, and making mandalas. My notebooks are covered in them, I have an entire pinterest board for mandalas, I teach classes at work about mandalas, I contemplate and believe in the meditative nature of mandalas, and circles in general. I think it's fantastic that so many cultures have their own versions of mandalas; circular motifs. There are medicine wheels, Aztec calendars, dream catchers, traditional Hindu mandalas, etc. Even nature has it's own mandalas! Anyway. I love mandalas. And circles.

So it's only natural that I should try and throw in some mandala making with my collage work. Here's the result!

xo

Art Fart: 27

This collage is another example of trying out new things and pushing out of my comfort zone. This time? Combining black and white images with colour ones. I didn't think it would work, but I really like how it looks.

I have a couple of shows coming up with my collage work in them - I'm really stoked and will share more info when the time comes. So I am diving head first into collage work and doing very little else (other than work and, eating, and stuff... the necessities.) I just wrapped up a sewing project that had taken over my work space for a month, so it's nice to have my big table back to do collage work at, instead of in front of the TV in my basement on the mushy leather ottoman. It was productive, but limiting.

So here's to freely creating in a good space, and a happy monday to all of you!
xo

ps. I updated my portfolio website. Take a peek, let me know what you think!

Art Fart: He likes it hot, hot, HOT!

This week I challenged myself to do a collage of a male subject, you know, just to mix it up. I don't want my work to be entirely woman focused. This proved to be very difficult to do with a collection of women's magazines mostly gathered from my step mom and the salon around the corner from me. Ha!

I think I did okay though, I had luck in that most of the male photos I found were close to the same size, face and body wise, so I was able to put them together into a fun new image!

Lately I have been really trying to focus on making art, on applying to jobs that I genuinely would love to do, and learning (again) what makes me feel good (ie: collage, exercise, eating well...). It's hard to find the motivation to get back into routine when you've been out of one for a while. Or rather, when you've gotten into a slightly less-than-healthy routine. But I've bought all the ingredients needed for several new recipes to try - so I'm going to have to, or else they'll all go to waste, right? ;) It's good to challenge ourselves out of our comfort zones sometimes, like with this collage! Usually the results are pretty OK!

xo

Art Fart: Wisdom Tooth Recovery

This has been a bit of a slow week for me as I recover from my wisdom teeth removal surgery. It's not been so bad, just seriously uncomfortable & a couple bouts of pain in my mouth. It's no fun though, to be tired and nauseous from all the meds and recovery. I feel like a numb potato sometimes! I'm sure some of you have experienced it too?

I just wanted to check in and say hello and share my little collage reflecting on this experience titled: "self portrait (with 4 fewer wisdom teeth)".


Have you had your wisdom teeth taken out?

xo

Art Fart: The Cactus Club & Thank You!

A few weeks ago a family friend mentioned a restaurant called "Cactus Club" in western Canada, and I couldn't help this fun image from popping into my head! This particular piece is digital because I had very specific images in mind, which is not usually the case for my collages as I normally just wing it.

I want to thank you all for being so positive and supportive about my collage work when I first posted it. It's something new to me and it really means a lot that people are expressing that they like them. I know an artist should work for themselves first (and I do!) but it's always a bit worrisome when you discover something new that you love love love and are finally happy with, and at first people don't seem quite as excited as you. But all your blog post comments and instagram comments have been really encouraging and I'm so excited with where collage is taking me!

You're all the best!
xo

ps. you can follow me on instagram @katiaengell_ for more collage posts! 
 

Art Fart: Moon Woman

Don't you love it when the moon is actually a well-shot, ceramic dinner plate?
Another reason I love college.

This is my "troll-doll-esque" Moon Woman collage from earlier this week. I have always been a sunshine kind of girl, but lately I have been venturing into moon and night time imagery.

Coincidentally I have had this Homeshake song stuck in my head all week, though I am not sure which came first: the song in my head, or the Moon Woman collage!


Happy weekend everyone!
xo

Art Fart: Collage & Colour

Today I'd like to share with you some of my art. It is something I wasn't planning on posting much of in this online space but it feels to me like it keeps creeping in anyway - which makes sense, as it is a big part of who I am.

Lately the only art-making that has really satisfied my soul is collage. It is great fun! The top one I made on the computer because I was away from my collection of magazines and bits. The bottom is a hand-cut collage, which I much prefer the process of.

I made these two pieces in the last week or so and I thought it was really interesting that they both have really similar colour palettes; with teal blues and golden yellows. It's funny to me because I never set out for a specific scheme or image in my collages - I collect my bits and pieces, sometimes with a vague concept or theme in mind, and see what I find. So to see a consistent colour scheme in my choices is really cool!

Anyway. This is my 'Art Fart' for today. I will probably share more on the blog as time goes.


xo

The Oscars & Alzheimers

Last night I watched the Oscars for the first time. Controversies and issues with the Academy aside, I was really happy to see famous, talented artists bring up Alzheimers on stage and that so much work in the mainstream media was done on the topic of it this year!

For those of you who don't know, I work as an art instructor at the Dotsa Bitove Wellness Academy, an academy for people with Alzheimers and dementia. It is truly an incredible experience and I am beyond fortunate to have fallen into this position at this particular academy. My coworkers are fantastic, the participants are inspiring and so full of knowledge and humour and stories and it is just so so so so so wonderful that I get to be a part of their lives in this small way; painting with them, laughing with them, drawing, brainstorming, talking to them, listening. Their stories are my favourite thing to listen to on a Monday morning and I wouldn't have it any other way right now.

I love this job. It has taught me so much about human nature and the fragility of it. It is humbling and I am reminded every time I work of how fortunate I am - sometimes literally, by participants, encouraging me to travel and live and experience while I can. It can be really hard to talk to those who are entirely aware of what is happening to their minds, but the experience is so positive for everyone thrives in this environment we've created at the academy and it is so lovely to see.

I highly encourage you to read a book, watch a movie, volunteer at a senior's home or similar program, do SOMETHING, to inform yourself about Alzheimers and memory loss.


Don't know where to start?
• Watch Still Alice - the film Julianne Moore won an Oscar for last night (I plan to read it - it was a book first!)
• Read this article and watch the video about a 'Dementia Village' created in Holland as an alternative to a typical senior's home! It's so incredible!
• Listen to the song Glen Campbell wrote for his wife and daughter when he found out he had Alzheimers which Tim McGraw sang at the Oscars last night as well.
• Watch a video and read more about the philosophy at the Dotsa Bitove Wellness Academy (My work place!!) and our approach to dealing with Alzheimers and Dementia!


FAIR WARNING. These may be a bit upsetting (the song especially made me cry a little). Know it is not my intention to be a downer or upset anyone, more so just to raise awareness and use my experience with Alzheimers and Dementia as a reminder:

Take advantage of your health, your youth, your ability to DO and to learn. Take care of your body and your mind. Experience everything while you can.

xo