I was so happy to wake up because we don't have classes today! But, my happiness turned to sadness when I realized how many school activities and lessons I needed to finish and read.
Instead of thinking about it, why not just start to do it? But just by thinking about it, it's already enough to give me stress! Although, there's nothing I can do but finish it on time.
Since I knew I couldn't finish all my school activities today, I decided to focus on some of them instead. One of the things I will do today is our project for our Religious and Values Education subject.
This project is all about a reflection on a Biblical story we chose. But there's a challenge because it needs to be handwritten and with border designs created manually. It's a big challenge because I have ugly penmanship, and my creativity isn't enough to do border designs. However, I'll still try my best this time.
Planning of Ideas
To start, I have here a bond paper and a pencil. Since I already wrote a draft of my reflection, what I need to do now is to write it on the bond paper, so I wrote my draft on the bond paper. However, instead of a pen, I used a pencil so that I could still erase it.
After writing it, my next problem was what border design I should create. At first, I thought of doing just lines and some color, just like what I did before in my projects. But I want to try to make it look vintage and aesthetic.
I looked up on the internet and found that a cup of coffee can make my idea happen! I then immediately went to a store and bought some instant coffee. I also searched how to use it and some references for a design.
The making Process
The first thing I did, was I got one tablespoon of coffee and some warm water. Then I mixed it up until the coffee dissolved. From it, I created three shades, this includes dark, less dark, and light.
Since this is my first time doing this I tried it first in a scratch paper to learn how to do it. I didn't expect that it would be hard but thank goodness my artistic personality is cooperating today. And here is the result of my practice. Now It's time to do it properly.
Based on what I watched, I painted first the lightest shade as the first layer, then proceeded to a bit darker shade as the second layer, and the darkest shade as the last layer. I only painted the borders with a dark because I wanted the center to be light.
While doing it, I realized that it's so fun doing it, even though it's time-consuming. But the outcome is surely worth it!
After a long time of painting coffee, I let the paper dry first before doing the next step. The next step is to rewrite what is written on the bond paper using a pen. While writing, all I thought was I hoped I would not get any erasure or else I would re-do this again.
Thankfully, nothing happened! Here is the progress.
However, after that, I was not satisfied and wanted to add more, so I decided to burn the border of the bond paper to make it more interesting. Also, doing it isn't a joke because I need to control the fire, or else my paper might burn into ashes.
After a lot of procedures, I finally did it. Here is the finished product.
It's my first time doing this kind of design in my projects. I didn't expect it to be a lot of work. And I never thought it would turn out so well! I had a lot of fun doing it. It feels like my artistic personality is improving.
Author's note: All pictures are taken and owned by the author. That's all for now!
-Pat T.