Swirls

"Swirls" is one of my favorite clip art look up words. It always has interesting little pieces that I can do quite a lot with...(I really need to scan some of my destination bookmarks made for our summer reading program Novel Destinations. Add it to the list, Jeeves. Sigh, I would love a butler...especially one that washes windows and dusts.)

Swirls are also a favorite doodle and the way I draw them, they are really a self propagating species of vine...My love of swirls combined with a need to practice (and use, since I spent money on them) with the pastels started what became "Innocent Dreaming".

In fact, I had done this multicolor, softly blurred card then slapped some fixative on it and it proceeded to sit around staring at me longingly while I put together Modern Pastoral, Winter Forest, and Champagne. Occasionally I would look at it and think, well what am I going to do now? Eventually after numerous sorting through my clipping file to work on these other projects, more elements (or cut out images and a piece of swirly purple ribbon) were set aside with my swirly background.

And, eventually, I got this:

Ribbon, magazine cut outs, pastels, fixative and a thin (okay, thinner layer than I usually do...although anyone can see it is still overdone so much so that it hasn't dried completely clear-- oops (see it without the gloss on the Index Card Creation page) layer of gel medium make up this particular piece.

The lesson learned, or more precisely, the lesson underlined three times and highlight in bright yellow, is some creations take time....lots and lots of time, coming together piece by piece and walking away is just as important as sitting down and doing some work.

With my already admitted lack of patience -- It is unfortunate but true, that the length of time afford to this project to develop actually comes from my bone-deep laziness....Oops?

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.)