Altered Silver

When we last left off with this tale, this "Very Special" spread had been pasted and glazed and was having a severe identity crisis. Soon after, some more stuff was done to the poor thing. Nothing all that "special," so don't get excited, lol.

After an acquisition of some new rubber stamps, this spread seemed like a fine place to give them a "test run," because when you get new stamps, you've gotta play with 'em. So without much thought or effort, I stamped "scratches" around in black ink, learning that the limitations of that particular stamp would be less visible on a much smaller canvas.

Then I stamped around on it with white ink, using a "crackle" stamp. This one had a pretty cool appearance, but would need more attention than I gave it at the time in order to appear more random.

Finally, I stamped the spread all over again with the scrolled design (in bright blue ink) as I'd done previously (before I'd accidentally wiped it out). ;)

And that's where I left off and the state the spread's been in for over a year. Is it finished? The answer's still no.

Will it ever be finished?
Hm...sometimes life holds mysteries without answers!



Technorati Tags: altered books, art journals, collage, mixed media

Previously, this spread was stamped, papered and glazed. This isn't much of an update because not much has changed with it. I decided I didn't like the yellow-ness being so strong, so I gave it a purple glaze.

Later, I stamped an overall scrollwork design with bright blue ink. This was a bit of an improvement and started speaking to me of possibilities. It needed to be toned a bit more, so I applied another glaze of the purple...woops, the scrollwork stamping hadn't had a chance to dry completely. So the blue of the ink mixed in with the purple of the glaze, and I figured what the heck and kept spreading it around. (If you look closely at the "Very Special" phrase, you can see just a bit of some remaining blue scrolls.)

I'm determined that something will come of this spread, "one way or the other." One way might be cluttering it with a bunch of embellishments; the other way would be to paint over it completely.

Yes, there'll be more to this tale, one way or the other.



Technorati Tags: altered books, collage

This spread got started very spontaneously. I was moving some tissue paper scraps out of my way and suddenly got excited about the color combination of the scraps. I tore them into strips and grabbed a primed F&W spread. I had recently received a handwriting rubber stamp which I was eager to put into use for a textured background.


The tissues were adhered in a sort of scattered fashion, then for good measure, I snipped a couple bits from a magazine and added them in, including the word phrase "Very Special," which I accented with a blue tissue.

After all was dry, I coated the full spread with a layer of yellow glaze. Is it finished? No. I'm not even sure what it's about yet, and it doesn't really have a focal point or complete composition. What will happen on it next? I don't know.

When I figure that out, this spread's process can continue.
Perhaps it will earn its title.



Technorati Tags: altered books, art journals, collage, mixed media