Un'aranciata..

Picture it, Sicily...well, Bologna, late August in 1999. It was my second day (or so, ah...memories) in Italy and I had finally done the mental math to realize that Bologna was sharing some latitude with Southeastern PA which meant heat, heat, heat and humidity. The ice fey that is my soul was melting in despair. And Then, then then...I had my first aranciata and I was in love.

I know it's basically orange soda but its so much better than the neon glowing orange stuff we swill in the states (to be honest, I like American orange soda as well...the heart is fickle). So upon my return several months later, depression and a longing for cafe macchiato, latte macchiato and aranciata set in....

Fast forward and San Pellegrino Aranciata is available in most grocery stores and generate great collage material:

L'aranciata

 Six pack cans come with these foil coverings on the top which I naturally ripped off in one piece and used to build this! If any previous post spoke of an ongoing project, this is it....There was a lot of time spent getting it to be flat again. Oh gel medium, how I love thee.

Anyways, back to that craving: I was lucky and a friend of mine found it at the Dean & De Luca's  in her hometown. Naturally when I finished this, I sent it to her.

Here's to you, Sailor Rosner....

Bubbles

Materials for my creations tend to come from a few sources: my mom's quilting scrap pile, random ribbon, magazines, catalogs, rejects of craft projects. Champagne is one such creation.

I could once again harp on the difference between what I image creating and what the end product is but demonstrating is so much more fun....

I had a co-worker at the library punching holes in the middle of cut out flowers and I asked from the remainders...numerous tiny circles. The gel medium was still very new when I requested these scraps and I thought it would allow me to create a piece where it looked like the dots were suspended in the clear gel.

The result is Champagne:

The scan is really really bad. In reality, it's better. I swear. So I suppose I should still give a material run down: pink, white and yellow punched holes, pink and yellow marker with lots and lots of gel medium. It's really cool looking if you hold it to the light (which you can't....darn computers).

I mentally tied the tiny circles to tiny bubbles to champagne to my favorite Dorothy Parker lines from the poem Inventory:

Three be the things I shall never attain:

Envy, content and sufficient champagne.

(From there, I naturally had to send it to a friend who has joined me in killing tat least of two bottles of the stuff.)

Second Chances

I don't know if the difference will be apparent here but I used the IF piece to play with the gel medium I bought to seal some of my collage work...

Of note: I should have paid more attention to the comments on warping  caused by the mix of medium and water. It produced a thin, shiny coat but was not exactly what I wanted. So after that first coat dried and then spent some time under my over-sized art books, I did another thicker coating of the medium with no additive. Resulting in the above image...

Note the damage because I have no patience and the collage stuck to every damn thing....

I've gotten a bit better but only a bit, as you will see when I post the piece that started my investigation into sealing and glossiness.