Hot Mess!

Hot Mess!

I had the most terrific day yesterday at my art friend's house.  Jan invited Michele and I to a day of journaling and lunch.  It was the most wonderful six hours of just playing and chatting and seeing what each other is up to in our individual art worlds.

Not only did we have fun but Jan made the most delicious lunch.  I mean D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S!  Jan's luncheon entree was Moroccan Chicken Tagine.  OMG!  I had never had this before and let me tell you  I got the recipe and will make it for Tim either today or tomorrow.  I had never had a preserved lemon before either.  Again OMG!  She served couscous and a salad with the chicken.  Taking a bite of couscous and the tagine simultaneously was almost heaven if not outright heaven!

I grabbed my journal and started working almost immediately after arriving at Jan's house.  Hot Mess is what came of the day.  Why would I call this a hot mess?  Well because I tried out a bunch of techniques that were experimental for me in many ways.  First, I wanted to use copies of photos from a high school year book.  I decided to do acrylic paint transfers and I only had white gesso.  The transfers worked fairly well but I learned a bit more about gesso.  It is very chalky and so getting a clear transfer was not in the cards yesterday.

I wasn't liking much of what I was accomplishing as I collaged.  However, I know that one must keep going and eventually something will come of it.  In one way I like what I created and in another way I don't.  That is OK.  I believe that I should put up the warts with successes.  That is the way of this art world.  Not everything is going to come out amazingly.

I found I like painted lace.  Michele does not like lace and so I am going to get more of it from her. I like mesh potato or some such vegetable bags and shiny chips bags.  Organza is a perfect veil ( see triangle shapes.).  I just love acrylic paint pens.  I will be using more of those.  I really do love image transfers.

So the day was amazing in that I had fun all around.  Before leaving we decided to create bundles of ephemera tied with ribbon or string.  In fact, we made two bundles, one for burying and one for hanging in a tree.  Michele also made several weathergrams to hang.  We marched into the woods to bury our bundles.  We pledged that we would return in two months to see what Mother Nature did to our bundles.