Two Saturday Projects

I went to bed last night at a reasonable time--for about five minutes.  Then I had an idea for solving one of my craft projects, and stayed awake until 2:00 a.m. clearing my spaces so I could work on it today.

(While it doesn't come naturally to me--what with the smallness of my house and my darting-from-thing-to-thing nature--the ideal studio situation would be to have one table for printing, one for paint, one for cutting, etc.  So I attempted to make that happen--as well as putting Gesso and matte medium in plastic squeeze bottles meant for condiments.)

1. Collaging on deli paper.

This is an idea I got from Jane La Fazio in one of the Wanderlust classes.  You take a piece of deli paper and lay little scraps of origami paper, one ply of napkins, lace, tissue paper, and sheer fabrics.  Each piece of paper or fabric is glued down with matte medium, then a thin layer of matte medium is applied to the top, piece by piece as it goes down.  You can keep layering as long as you like.

After it's all done, you can add a focal point and stitch it on top with the machine--or glue it if you prefer.  Jane used images from her watercolors as focal points, but you can use anything you like. When all the pieces are down, the whole piece acts more like fabric than paper and you can sew right on it--or you can cut it into strips and squares and reassemble it into another design.

My first effort required a quick trip to Michaels to get more matte medium just as they were closing.

Layer One

I laid it inside a round tray I'd made a few months ago and decided that it would be perfect for covering the bottom of the tray, but the deli paper wasn't large enough.  So the solution came, as solutions often do, just as I was falling asleep.  Tape two pieces of deli paper together, cut a circle, and voila!

So that's what I'm going to be working on today.

2. Journal in a Rolo-Dex tray.

I have a box meant for holding Rolo-dex cards.  I'm gel printing Rolo-dex cards and making "pages" out of cards to go into the box.

The problem is that the cards you can buy for Rolo-dex holders now are thin as paper, not the card stock they used to make them out of. The girl at Office Max said they didn't sell Rolex watches there--indicating either her age (who under forty knows what a Rolo-dex is?) or her assumption that I didn't know the difference between an office supply store and a jewelry store.

My parents used to use Rolodexes at work and at home to keep addresses, and I still fondly remember my daddy's handwriting on his cards--where he added notes from phone conversations.

So to solve the problem, you either have to find vintage cards or glue two flimsy ones together--then proceed to Gel Print or paint or collage on them.

The box itself can be decorated with gel printed pages, etc.--an idea I got from Cat Kerr at Joggles.

Both of these projects are meditative--capturing the mood I often get while traveling on the road, listening to music and podcasts.  I had considered moving my "studio" to the casita until Day pointed out that the way I'm doing it is best because my kitchen is the room in the house with the best natural light.

*****

Speaking of Day: she is now serving as interim Men's Lacrosse Team coach at her high school!  Since the real coach left for another school, and since both her boys are avid lacrosse players, she--who has never played a sport in her life--volunteered to coach a bunch of teenaged boys until a "qualified candidate" emerges.

She loves it so much, she hopes it will take a while to find a real coach.

When word got around that she was coaching, the teams ballooned in size, as she is a very popular teacher at Falls Church.  That or former students in her English classes were curious to see how their non-athletic teacher would manage as a coach.  She loves her current job so much, but as she said, it revolves entirely around teachers and she misses her contact with students..

I love the spunk of my daughter!  (Of course, Jackson--captain of the team--will be coaching his mom on coaching, but she'll catch on, I have no doubt, as this is how Day rolls!)

When she told her brother she was volunteering to coach a high school team, he said, "Of course, you did!"

And then he said what I've been thinking every time I hear her happy voice on the phone: "You sound like Daisy again!"