Today I have planned to go see my Mom, as I mentioned yesterday. Yesterday though, my right knee decided to pitch a fit and boy did it throw a kink in things. I have no idea why, but all of the sudden, around noon, it began it hurt. I didn't do anything odd or special before it began it's fit. Still, I hobbled to get my Goodwill donations to the car, which was a total chore, drove, dropped off donations and went in for a while. I knew I should skip the "go in" part since my knee was fussing, but I was right THERE and I love that part, so I reasoned I would get a cart when I went in and use that as a crutch of sorts in case I needed to lift up my foot to take the pressure off my knee now and then. Sometimes I can be a little stubborn if I want something bad enough. I can reason that I have worked all week and looked forward to this a lot and it wouldn't be fair to myself if I skipped it, so in I hobbled. LOL !! I did find 4 books to add to my art stash and a couple of other useful things.
Last night I went through some of the recently painted collage papers and trimmed off some of the edges. I cut some and tore some. It created quite the pile of true scraps. I don't really have a hard time getting rid of bits this small, but something challenged me to make a piece of art with these dregs, so I did.
I know I have showed some pieces I have made from what I called scraps and they were small pieces, but they were not true scrap I suppose as the pieces were big enough that I saved them on purpose, where these true scraps would be put in the trash bin. It looks like it has a wonky shape because it is on thick paper instead of a canvas or canvas board. In reality, the paper is not an odd shape. I can't say it is prize winning work, but it still shows that in art, you can make something out of nearly nothing if you are of a mind to.
The trash is where the rest of it landed after I made my "true scrap" piece. It was still fun trying to see if I could make anything out of the pile.
A closeup of the center.
I like to look through the book section when I go to the thrift places. In the beginning I was looking more for things like dictionaries or other books that had mathmatics or schematics or other interesting illustrations in them to paint and turn into collage papers. Since then, what I look for has changed for a different kind of collage, decorating books or flowers or the such that have very high color. On the beginning type books, I didn't want pages with shiny slick finishes, I wanted books with porous pages for painting on, but for cutting up and making collages from pictures instead, shiny is ok.
A time or two though, I have grabbed up what I thought would be a treasure in the second regard, high color, interesting subjects, only to get home and when I went through later, wondered if I would really be able to cut them up! This is one of those books. Pansies are so beautiful and this book was full of beautiful photos. Some were macros and others were pansies in pots or growing with other flowers mixed in. It almost seems a shame to cut it up, but on the other hand, it was not my intent to buy books just to collect books. It doesn't seem like it should be a problem considering why I bought them, but sometimes it is a hard decision to cut something so lovely up. This is the cover of the book, well, the book-cover cover.
I took a few photos of some of the pages and made a couple of collages to show parts of some of the photos in the book.
You can now get a hint of the beautiful photos that are there, so you can see my dilemma better. Honestly, they are frame worthy photos. Some of them would look lovely matted, framed and hung on the wall.
Oh well !
Lately when I have made these posts, it has been a bit of a chore. For some reason the program jumps all around, maybe when it is self-updating, I don't know, but it causes the cursor to move to other places or between other photos without me knowing and next thing I know, I have written parts and they are in the wrong place. This is not fun to have to move them all around and I wish there was a solution. There probably isn't, but I can still wish for one. Ugh....
That's all for this morning. I've got to get around here a little more and decide if I am going to Mom's or if I am staying home to give my misbehaving knee a rest day. I have already messaged my sister who will pick up my food offerings and card for Mom if I think I can't go.
