The monthly ATC group I belong to has themes for each month’s cards. Last month it was announced that August would be “Fantasy” and September would be “Picnic”. I came home grumbling to myself, “Picnic? What kind of a theme is Picnic? It’s just going to be a bunch of picnic baskets and ants! That just isn’t my style.” I wasn’t worried about “Fantasy”. I was sure I could do a fantasy card in my sleep.

Boy was I wrong! Within a day I had a complete idea for the Picnic card and had hit a creative block on all things fantasy. I spent the entire month thinking empty thoughts about it. Finally the day before the cards were due an idea came to me. I had time in the morning to start by designing a fantasy creature (flying fish). Then I had things to do all day so I didn’t actually get started on the card until after dinner. About 1 am I completed the cards and headed off to bed.

  To design the flying fish I started with a clip art fish image. I made some minor changes to the image and then added wings. The bird-like creature is a rubber stamp I got about 16 years ago. Some of the gals think he is a creature from Alice in Wonderland but I don’t know. He’s just a cool looking bird to me.

I’ll be uploading all the swap cards to my site later this evening.