Zettiology

Written and Created by PaperCraftCentral Susan

How do you describe Zettiology?

"Could you say it is sustained confusion?"
~PaperCraftCentral Susan

 Zettiology art is an intriguing style of papercrafting. Let me tell you how I discovered what it is.

I was challenged to try something new one month. The challenge was to to make some ATCs (Artist Trading Cards) in Zetti style. Now I do enjoy making those little cards so decided to play along.

The rules for the challenge said I needed to make cards to the specification of ATCs. ATCs are always 2.5" X 3.5" (64 X 89mm) in size.

First, I needed to know what Zettiology style was, so I went searching for answers. I love to learn new things so it was no hardship to search for the meaning. The results are outlined in the next section for you so you can know about this style too.

It was very hard to find anything written about the art form but I did get some intriguing glimpses of wings, stripey legs, pointy hats and a mixture of black, white and brightly coloured images on Teesha Moore's website. It looked like a fun way to craft!

That was it. I was hooked. I was fascinated and determined to find out what this art form was all about.The next section tells you what I found.

What is Zettiology?

All of the examples of the art form that I had seen had a folk art quality about them, with creatures who sported fairy-like legs and figures of myth and legend, some of which I am sure haven't yet been written.

The summaries I found about Zettiology said it was a whimsical art form using surreal figures. People also use visual contrasts like black and white stripes or other patterns in their images. The faces could either be static or full of vivid colours. 

Artists include playful elements in their work like pointy hats, geometric shapes, whimsical text (or parts of text) and striped legs featured a lot.

The art form uses several mediums, notably rubber stamping, collage, doodling, and altered art journaling. All types of papercrafters could take on this art form then and try their hand at mixed media. 

What is mixed media? It is an art form where you combine two or more different types of materials or techniques into a single art piece. So you may combine paper and lace, or painting, journaling and rubber stamping, for example. 

The creators of Zettiology are a married couple, Teesha Moore who I mentioned above and Tracy Moore her husband. You can see some of their work on Instagram by clicking on their names.

How I made my Challenge Entry

I decided to put my own spin on the matter by showing a boy's dream that had not come true. I started with a layered black cardstock base by glueing several little cards together to make my piece sturdy. 

Maybe you can relate to having a dream as a child that did not materialise quite the way you wanted it to? That's what happened to this poor young man as well.

He dreamed of elegant striped Zetti legs, but instead, look what he got. Be careful what you wish for! His face with that expression of confused  surprise says it all for me.

Maybe I should have put my own face on there. It would kind of express how I felt about Zetti before I understood a bit more about it. Lol! At least my entry was accepted by the challenge organisers.

While I probably hadn't fully grasped all that is bound up in the idea of Zetti when I joined the challenge, I did come up with the idea of taking a puzzled boy's face and torso from one stamp (it included the stripey background) and mixing it together with the legs of the retired Voila! chef stamp from Stampin' Up! using the masking technique. I did this on a separate piece of basic white cardstock then cut the joined image out to glue onto my black background.

I coloured the stamped images  with watercolour pencils and allowed the colours to run a little especially behind the boy. After glueing the stamped image in place on my black background cardstock, I added hand written journalling and some dots to the black background in white gel pen. 

I went ahead with making my ATCs after I understood what they were supposed to be like. You can see the entire set I made at the top of the page, each one slightly differnt to the other. Here is one of my favourites.

I took some license with the idea of Zettiology as I latched on to the notion that it was meant to be a little bit of fun and silliness as well as a chance to try out a new art form.That sounded like a great challenge to me.

One of the first things that drew me to papercrafting in general was the chance to enjoy expressing myself and playing with different techniques and ideas. This challenge covered all of those attractants for me.

I will probably only occasionally dabble in the whimsical world of papercrafting called Zettiology, but I sure did enjoy the experience of taking part in the challenge.

If you have some examples of your own experiments with this art form, I hope you will share them with me.