It’s taken a long time, but “Bejeweled” is finally finished. It just took a few more details, but it's the magical part - the part where everything works at last, the part that's the most fun and the most satisfying. As part of that final stage, I had a little bit of text I wanted to add, but it was challenging to find a good place to put it. In the upper left corner, it says “Be it day or night” and in the lower part of the right side it says “the world is bejeweled.”
When I do text, I always wonder exactly how to proceed. Sometimes I really like stream-of-consciousness handwriting all over the piece at an early stage – when much of it will be covered in later phases. Other times, especially when I only have a little say, I prefer placing it carefully and meaningfully toward the end so - it will show. Sometimes I like the text to be unreadable, or nearly so. For that, I might write in a different language, like Greek or Latin; or use a different alphabet, like Theban script or runes.
I’m self-conscious about my handwriting. Sometimes it’s really nice and even and pretty. But so much of the time – especially when I’m writing in my art journal! – it’s just messy. But, for better or worse, it’s me. Anyway, handwriting is what I chose here. I would have liked to use alphabet stamps, but I really needed for some of the text to be on light background and some to be on a dark background, and I don’t have any ink pads with white (or another light color) ink.
There are other choices besides handwriting and using alphabet stamps. I could cut letters from magazines and glue them on. I could compose the text on my laptop with whatever font and in whatever size I want, then print it out, fix the ink, and glue it in place. Both these choices, though, will have the opaque background of the paper from the magazine or from my printer. I’d like to find something transparent to print on. I’m remembering “transparences” from the old, old days, but they were pretty thick and I don’t know if I could – or how I would – fix the ink.
UPDATE: I just found a tracing paper that is supposed to be appropriate for inkjet printers, so I’ll give it a try. Sometimes I just get stuck in the past. If I couldn’t find something 20 years ago, I just assume I still can’t find it. I’ve got to change that…
But, back to the spread. The two things that I think improved the piece the most were adding the frames around the two rectangular elements on the left side (but choosing not to frame the third) and adding the “milky way” cluster of fireflies on the dark side.
Here’s a little trick for you.
These two thread ends were left when I ran out of thread while sewing the journal pages together and I had to add another piece. They happened to be showing in the fold of this spread, and I decided to preserve them rather than cut them short and glue the ends under one of the collage pieces. Instead, I cut a little hole in the collage piece and brought the thread ends through. But what to do with them?
I thought about beads. But even little ones might have added too much bulk. Then I thought of these little foil butterflies. The problem with that idea, though, is how thin the foil (from chocolates, by the way) was. They’d never hold up on their own. So here’s what I did.
1. I cut a little butterfly shape from a piece of a file card. Then I cut two small squares from the file card and traced around the edge of the butterfly on each one. I glued foil to cover the back of the squares – the side without the pencil heart design.
2. When the glue was dry, I cut off the excess foil, leaving the file card heart with foil on one side. I then glued the end of the string to the file card side of the heart.
3. When that glue was dry, I glued a square of foil over the file card side of the heart. 4. And when that glue was dry, I trimmed away the excess.
Voila! A heart with foil on both sides and the stiffness of a file card! By the way, I made one silver and the other gold.
When I began working on this spread, I was intrigued with the idea of painting night scenes. I even ordered black gesso. Will I follow through? Only time will tell.
An Invitation
Join Me On a Virtual Sabbatical,
the Creative Time-Out
I’m so excited to extend an invitation to you. It’s for a free on-line event that I’m organizing, having been inspired by the sabbatical I gave myself about a month ago. In short, it’s an on-line get together for people who give themselves that same great gift I gave myself, but with one super important change. Even though we’ll each choose our own topics to work on, we’ll have each others’ company, inspiration, and encouragement through a private Facebook Group and Zoom meetings.
The event will run from Saturday, July 27, through Sunday, August 4. During that period, simply devote as much time as you can carve from your schedule and we’ll see what wonderful things happen.
To find out more, just watch the video, by clicking on the image just below of me talking!
To sign up, just go to the Facebook Group by clicking here and click the JOIN button.
Hope to see you there!
P.S. To read my past blog posts about my sabbatical, just follow the links here:
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