I'm not sure what I was thinking with this latest project. It ended up more than just a little bit bonkers.
For some bizarre reason I decided to see what I could do with some cardboard scraps which any sane person would surely have thrown away.
Some years ago, for my partner's birthday party, I made some bunting which included a line of cycling shirts, a line of kayakers and a line of bicycles.
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I cut out the shapes on my silhouette machine, which you can see in the top of this picture, and strung them onto lines.
I couldn't find a photo of the completed project but you can get an idea of it from this picture I took more recently.
After cutting out the shapes I was left with the bits of cardboard from which they'd been cut. I have no idea why I kept them but when I came across them recently I decided to see if I could do something creative with them. Wanting to utilise every last bit I used a paper punch to cut out some flowers and Christmas trees where there was space enough to do so.
Then I stuck them with washi tape onto some book pages, wondering what texture they would create if I layered papers on top of them.
To give me a more even substrate on which to work I painted over the sheet with white gesso.
Next I glued on 3 pieces of sewing pattern. Don't ask me why I just did. OK?
I dripped on a variety of alcohol inks, thinking they would soak into the paper and spread but I think, unlike regular tissue paper, sewing patterns must have some sort of coating on them probably to strengthen them. As a result the ink didn't really sink in. Oh well. Lesson learned.
Next I scribbled on oil pastels in between the ink blotches. I thought they might pick up the texture from the cut outs in the cardboard but, except for in a couple of places, this didn't happen.
To make the cutouts a bit more prominent I used a black market to highlight some of them. Then I drew on some stems and leaves and added white spots to some of the leaves. And I'm left with this.
I've no idea what I'll do with it, if anything. Ironically, the thing that started it all, the cut out cardboard, makes it a bit unstable to use in other projects. There's a possibility I could make it into a journal cover if I strengthened it but it's more likely to end up in the bin.
I took pleasure however, from treating it as an instant stained glass window by holding it up to the attic dormer. Ah the little things.
What ever you're doing today, may you have fun doing it. 💜