Friendship collage

A few days ago I started this piece. I have now started two more, but they take several days to complete. First it takes about 18 hours for the pieces to dry after I glue two pieces of substrate together. Then it takes another day for the gesso to dry on both sides.

Today I started on this by stamping white swirls and ginkgo leaves onto the page, then adding a black bird. So far I sort of like the piece, but feel the swirls are a bit much in all four corners. I also am not in love with the pink.

Next I added some of my new lavender paint over the entire piece to tone down the pink. Drat. Now I've covered the ginkgo leaves.

My next step was to create the embellishment by sewing two scraps together, then adding some of my new green paint to the piece. Now the ginkgo leaves have really receded to the background. Time to rethink this project.

This is the same photo as above, except the image above was scanned and this one was photographed while it was still wet. I took the time to consider my options and decided I could do one of two things: restamp the ginkgo leaves or draw around them using a black pen. OK, I will admit, I'm not a stamper and I'm not a doodler. Which was the less of two evils? I decided to try to restamp the ginkgo leaves, thinking I could possibly line them up, and desperately wishing it was a clear stamp, which it was not.

I added a touch of green paint to the gesso and overstamped the original ginkgo leaves. I was relatively happy with the outcome.

Next I needed some paper for the sentiment and decided to use some of the leftover coffee from the neighborhood block party before it spoiled. I grabbed a bunch of my brightly colored copier weight papers and attempted to tone them down a bit.

I was hoping to tone down the hot (neon) pink to something manageable. Little did I realize the pink would bleed all over the other colors, producing a wonderful effect.

It was windy, so I had to weigh everything down.

I wanted to make sure I had lots of extra papers, and had them spread over every outside surface I could find.

As I was taking photos, the papers kept flapping in the breeze. It wouldn't be long and they would be dry. In fact, I used the green one above in my printer to make the sentiment for the completed friendship collage.

I'm really happy with the way this turned out. It is nothing like I planned it when I started, and it's a bit plain, but I don't want to overdo it and junk it up. I hope you like it, too. Feel free to click on any of the images for a larger view.