Quotes: a swap

Today I'm taking my neighbor Sally to the Surgery Center to have some kind of surgery. I don't even know what they are doing, but I know she will be there at least three hours, maybe longer. So I will be taking a few art supplies to keep me company. One thing I know is, our high for the day has come and gone. We are now into the wet, icy part of the day. I hope the rest of this entry warms you a bit.

My friend Halle requested this swap, so here is my tip-in. Since the swap is now completed, I can show my "Quote" entries.


This is the front. Here is how I made these. I began by experimenting with the backgrounds. I first laid down oil pastels, but they didn't spread, because they had melted in their box. I was going for the resist factor they would have provided. Next, I scribbled purple and orange crayons (Crayola) over the pages. Some scribbles show up better than others. Next, I laid down Titan Buff fluid acrylic paint. When the Titan Buff was dry, I added two colors of green and one blue fluid acrylic. Sorry, I don't remember the exact names, but they are all Golden brand. I made all the backgrounds on 110 lb. watercolor paper I cut to 8.5 X 11 inches.

One of my favorite quotes is by Einstein. I always laugh when I see it. I printed the quotes and colored them using pigment ink direct-to-paper. The "clock" was made using a rusty can lid that I also "burned" in my chiminea this summer. I sealed each rusty piece with spray sealer. I added real clock hands and one hour number, along with one button for each timepiece. The quote was then sewn to the paper. As a final step, after everything else was finished and sewn together, I added the clock assembly using E-6000.


For the back, I stole . . . ripped off. . . borrowed a quote I found on Dianne's blog. I loved the quote and the inspiration it provided for this side of my tip-in. It is a quote by Danny Kaye and reads "Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint on it you can."

I spent a lot of time trying to get gesso on the page, but the toothbrush I used didn't do the job I had hoped for. Since the gesso didn't provide the desired effect I wanted, and to try to live up to the quote, I dribbled some purple fluid acrylic down the top of each piece.

AH-HA!! Some of the oil pastel actually resisted, at least on the page above. Next I added circles of metallic copper and bronze fluid acrylic paint using jar lids, and allowed the pages to dry. Next, I sewed the saying, along with some yellow drywall tape to the page, as well as my information I hand wrote on labels I colored using Twinkling H20s. I blanked out my last name for this blog post. Finally, I folded the page and sewed on three sides. I didn't sew on the gutter edge in case some people wanted to bind them using a binding machine instead of tipping them into a book. I hope the recipients like them.

And even though I have not mentioned it in the two previous posts, my thoughts are with the people of Christchurch in New Zealand. There seems to be so many deaths and such devastation coming from that part of the world right now.