- Ashley Kalagian Blunt: a candle – bird? – in the wind
- Blue “sparrow” for Zana Fraillon
- Arigato to Danie Ware
- Dumplings bring oceans of joy: thanks to Wai Chim
- Gumboots and a bottle pouring an ocean: thank you Tabitha Bird
- A monster of a job earns a monster thank you to Cass Moriarty
- ‘The Wave’ inspired Imbi Neeme’s book cover, which inspired this card
- Gabrielle Tozer: thank you from DMZ
- Anna Whateley: such a normal selfie (card)
- Rob McDonald lives with rainbows
- Kelly Van Nelson lives in Graffiti Lane 😉
- An experimental card for Kelly Morton
- Simon Cleary confronted with a four-legged war artist: “Who’s (not) a good boy then?”
- Favel Parrett: Past the Shallows
- I had a whale of a time interviewing Elizabeth Knox
- Carly Findlay: a thank you party! early January 2020
Cass Moriarty contributed to the Authors For Fireys fundraiser in January 2020. Emily Gale and Nova Wheetman organised this mammoth undertaking. They raised $513,149 to support firefighters and to help Australia’s bushfire survivors.
The entire list of original Authors For Fireys series of interviews and guest blogs are here. The ‘thank you’ posts, each of which include my cardmaking efforts, are here.
Meet Cass Moriarty
Cass Moriarty organised several – more than several – bundles of books for the fundraiser and came on DMZ’s podcast to talk about ALL of them. It was a marathon podcast episode with a HUGE list of books from HEAPS of different authors for you to choose from. Why choose? Read them ALL!
Cass Moriarty’s novels include PARTING WORDS (UQP 2017) and THE PROMISE SEED (UQP 2015), longlisted for 2017 Dublin International Literary Award, and shortlisted for both the 2016 Queensland Literary Awards (People’s Choice Award) and the 2013 QLA (Emerging Author category). Both novels explore the silences and secrets in families, and feature themes of betrayal, loyalty, loss, grief and forgiveness. The Saturday Paper has regularly published her work. She is a book reviewer and critic, a writing mentor, an Australia Council recipient, a QLA judge, and she presents workshops and hosts literary conversations. She has six children. Now represented by Alex Adsett Publishing Services.
Find Cass Moriarty on her website, Facebook and Twitter.
Dark Matter Zine says thank you
I am a novice card maker but I made the pictured card. This is a thank you to Cass Moriarty for appearing as a guest on Dark Matter Zine and for supporting Australia’s firefighters.
About the card
This card took a few hours to make as do most of the cards I’ve made. It’s a rare one that takes less than an hour but some take a lot longer than 2 hours.
I used distress oxide inks blended on some Neena solar white card stock (this is smooth medium-weight card that’s much heavier than normal printer paper). After that was dry, I used an anti-static tool then Versamagic clear ink to stamp the octopus on the card. Then I used white embossing powder and a heat tool to melt it after removing some of the stamped embellishments by masking and/or brushing embossing powder off the card with a soft paintbrush.
This left me with a white outline on a blue card base. Then I mixed some Perfect Pearls green and white powder with water (two separate colors) to paint the octopus in metallic colors, using variations in consistency of the powder to water to get tone as well as allowing the blue background to show through for more tonal variation. Finally, I printed the ‘authors for fireys’ sentiment (or cut another one off the bulk lot I’d previously printed) and die cut and glued the ‘thank you’. It took a while but wasn’t technically difficult, other than trying to see what I was doing.
My new really-close-distance (like about 10cm distant) reading glasses help. These days I find I switch between them and my ‘normal’ reading glasses, both of which have SO MUCH MAGNIFICATION that even my optometrist was surprised during testing. I still can’t read normal-sized books with either pair for long unless I’m prepared to take painkillers and sleep it off, but it helps with things like this. I guess reading requires even more specific focused effort. /shrug.
The Old Ones
As the Old Ones rise from the deeps during this apocalypse, may you find joy in creating and giving. This is not to in any way diminish your stress or pain, but as a way of distraction and relishing life. Children get it right in my opinion: even in times of great grief, they often find moments of joy that allow them to laugh before crying once more. We, too, need ‘joy breaks’ in the bleakness. May this sinister, threatening, but oh-so-pretty monster of the deep encourage and incite you to find your joy too, to do what makes your heart happy.
Stay safe,
Nalini
