InspireMeThursday - Whimsy

Here it is! A whimsical - drumroll please! - sardine can!

I wanted to finish a collage for this prompt. But staring at the empty sardine box, I remembered Michael deMeng makes some fabulous mini shrines in these cans. So I decided to give it a try. I used ephemera related to the pilgrimage I did last year to Santiago de Compostela in Spain.

On the outside, I collaged scraps of paper. On the bottom of the can, I glued a pair of pilgrim boots. The actual bronze sculpture is found in Fisterra, at the ocean. In the old days, Fisterra was the place where the pilgrims burned their old clothes and wash in the ocean before heading back home. I forgot to give back the key when I left, so there it is. Silence is a faithful companion to a pilgrim. And on the small luggage tag there are some stars (compostela meaning "field of stars. The Way to Compostela follows the Milky Way from East to West).
I also glued a clock face - not sure why. It seemd to belong there. The woman's face on the lid is partially a sailboat. By mistake, I glued the sailboat upside down and in doing so, it completed the woman's face. And then I had to glue one of my embossed washers!! I seem to be in the "washer phase" - they pop up everywhere.

InspireMeThursday - Crayons

Melted crayons on the back cover of my journal. The colors became too dark, so I applied a bit of Shiva paintstick grey and then doodled with correction fluid pen.



















Caran d'ache Neocolor on very heavy watercolor paper. I was hoping to see a nice blend of blues, but the water soaked right through the paper and the colors did not blend at all. On the metal decoration at the top it is written "Celebrate" and on the white door at the bottom left, "Deja vu".
In the right corner, there are some paper beads and a glass bead on a piece of transparent fabric. To make the collage look more "whole", I wrote quotes with black ink and stamped some gold acrylic randomly over the images.

Golden Gate Park - The Japanese Tea Garden

Mistake revisited

I tried again the hot fusion project. I used as a base a linen napkin I bought at the flea market.
I glued various papers using matte medium (pieces of a map, napkins from the coffee shop, a dyed feather, fibers from a scarf, tisseu paper, skeleton leaves, fabric leftover). As a focal point, I had a geisha cut from a flyer from the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. Except that I worled the background too much and the image did not stand out anymore. It is always good to know when to stop. I colored with shiva paintsticks and watercolors. I created some texture by applying gel medium through a stencil (I did not want to use molding paste because I wanted to still see the background). Anyway, I lost the focal point. So I made another one - a page from an old book and a vintage image from the flea market. I added some thread and few beads (this would have been nice to do with the sawing machine but I do not have one). Then I fused the collage on a piece of canvass using iron-on fusible. This is the result:

My office/studio assistant

Lonely

I will look for this tree the next time I run around there. I want to see if it changed with the seasons.

InspireMeThursday - Doors

I like stained glass. I pass in front of this house almost every Saturday when I go for my long run.

Every wall is a door.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Mistake

This past weekend, I experimented with fabric-paper heat fusion following DJ Pettit's article in a past issue of Cloth, Paper, Scissors. I decided to work on a stretched canvass. Everything went smoothly until I had to apply the heat. Because of the stretcher, I could not apply enough pressure to bond the paper and the fabric, even though I placed books under the canvass to support it. In fact, I destroyed the book cover which happened to be plastic. The parchment paper stuck to the collage and I peeled it off. Then, I tried wax paper. The wax melted and mixed with the collage. The paper still stuck. It was ugly. I peeled off the was paper and scraped the collage, then I applied a layer of gesso. Bits of the collage still show, creating some texture in the background. DJ applies molding paste and gesso as the first layer. Not sure if I should wait for it to dry before applying the first layer of collage papers. I found that the background was not adhesive enough when gluing the papers on wet molding paste and an excessive amount of air bubbles got trapped under the paper. When I tried applying the papers directly on fabric, there were no bubbles. Gesso could be brushed over the papers to push the layers in the background.
I will be doing this again - the right way.

San Francisco

Here are some pictures I took in San Francisco. They will make their way in some form of altered art.