Well, this is what my blog feels like! Gosh, it's been so long!
Since many of you do not know, I have been dealing with some pretty severe back issues over the last 6 months, which has made my blogging and almost everything else much more difficult. But I persevere and so here I am. The back stuff hasn't gone away. Next step is likely surgery, so...
Lately, I've been nurturing a desire to create a multi-media piece about myself. I want to create a collage titled "Pieces of Me". This is all pretty new as I want to use paint, fabric, beads, glass, etc.
But I am a chicken. I have this irrational fear of doing it wrong, using up supplies and never having any more, making it ugly, etc. So I come up with ideas and then never see them through.
In an effort to move through that, I did two things.
Step 1. I located a large roll of thick canvas we just happened to have lying around. I asked my love to trace me. And then I painted a thick black gesso line around me.
Jazz hands and crazy hair, baby!
Step 2. I used a piece of scrap canvas and began creating a 6 Petal piece to try out different methods, materials, mediums, etc. This was crucial. Then, of course, my back went kaplooey and I have not done anything more with this large piece.
But the idea behind 6 Petal is that I am interested/fascinated/inspired by variety. Fiber Art, Glass, Metal, Beads, Paint, and Clay. 6 areas, 6 petals. I decided to make a large flower and create each petal using a different medium.
The fiber leaf. I found a piece of needlepoint canvas and drew a leaf shape. And then I played with thread and fabric and stitched it to the larger canvas.
The glass leaf. I used sea glass in brown and white and crushed windshield glass. This reminds me of a beach. The crushed glass has a sparkle to it, like water.
The metal leaf. My husband is the metal worker. I cut the shape from a thin sheet of copper. Vin then played with texture, rivets and torching. I love the colors.
The beaded leaf. I knew there was no way I was going to stitch on thousands of seed beads for this particular project. This was really a test or an experiment. So, I used acrylic medium, which is a lot like Modge Podge (which is cheaper and what I should have used). I spread it on, sprinkled, waited for it to dry and repeated the process. I wanted to get a sense of a beaded leaf without all the tedious work.
These are my painted leaf. They're the same one, different stages. The top one was my attempt at using acrylics. I am not much of a painter. It had a very 2 dimensional quality, lacking that 3rd dimension the others had. So we tried using crackle paste. We tinted it with paint and layered it on. We decided we would try creating a lip around the edge and then play with drying pigment. But the leaf didn't crackle the way we expected. Maybe it wasn't thick enough. The bottom one is the crackle effect and that's where it has stayed.
The clay leaf. I used pieces of experiment clay I had lying around. I'd experimented with foil and embossing powders. I stamped the word clay and baked it up.
This is the piece as it stands today. The leaves are all attached and the background is covered in white gesso to get rid of those charcoal marks. It was a liberating experiment. I want to do it again before tackling my large project. The middle of the flower will be a small quilt ball, almost pincushion-like and I'll stick ball-topped pins in it.
I'm enjoying the experimenting process. I think it's good for me. One step at a time.
Yours in Creativity!
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