Rolling with the punches
When I sit down to develop a class I think ‘oh, I love this photo I know exactly what I want to do with it!’ I should know better by now that it’s never that easy - but I forget.
Here’s a good example. I wanted to scrap the story of my son’s adventure into wood working and carving. First I need a photo of him at or with his craft. He prefers to be behind the camera not in front of it. So I’m scouring through his Instagram account, find a photo and the app I used previously to download his photos no longer works. It’s been upgraded and I can no longer use it to download his photos. So my daughter says to just take a screen shot. Ok. That worked!
Go to my Selphy Printer to print the photo and it’s also been upgraded. I actually like a lot of the changes but it takes me a bit to figure them out so I can get the size and shape of photo I want. Ok. Got the photo!
On to paper selection. I don’t really have much in the way of something that will go well with blues so I pull out all my paper containers till I find some really old Sweetwater. Really old. That will work for the background but what about all the little bits and pieces I want to use for texture and movement? Found a little 6x6 Paper Pad by Maja Designs that I don’t ever remember buying but the colors work great!
So I start tearing and cutting and playing till I get a layout I like and take a picture - always take a picture! Then the real fun begins. I begin stamping, inking edges, spritzing and crinkling edges. Fussy cutting my stamped images and just going through the entire aging process for paper. I added my crackle glaze and laid all the pieces out to dry on my mat.
A couple hours later I head back to my room for assembly. It’s always so much fun to see it actually come together and look like nothing that I had imagined. It obviously needs more but I’ll think about it overnight and see what tomorrow brings. Wasn’t real happy to discover my crackle glaze had pulled dye from the paper and turned pink! Oh geez! Now what? I went ahead and added some words, tissue tape, twine and the title - I don’t even want to talk about that title!
I cut my titles on my Joy. I love that little machine. However, this time it didn’t like the font I selected for the word, introducing. It kept cutting my g. Then when I finally got it cut nicely on the fourth or fifth try I ran it through my Xyron 150 which ran out of tape in the middle of the word! So I had to cut it again!
I decided to do some dry brushing of white gesso over the pinkish crackle glaze then add some black acrylic paint splatters. I am really please with the finish but now I have to wonder if I can teach all these techniques in a 3-4 hour time span. I’ll let you know how that goes! Wish me luck!