Crusade #25 - Better late than never... is what I say ! :-)

I'd love to hear your thoughts about the articles and the ideas from these articles I have added to my post... They would be super appreciated!

Experiment #one

I painted gesso on this paper, let it dry, then added about 4 more layers! The gesso I bought is so thin and not what I expected at all! But... as I added the layers it did start to build up some neat texture and created ridges in the horizontal stroke I applied it with. I let a dish of the gesso stay in the open air for a few hours and this did dry out enough to give it the thickness I was expecting in the first place. So I blobbed it in the corner and embedded a picture of a candle my Mom drew and painted some time in the 80's. The candle stick was one that my Grandma had in her house as far back as I can remember. I wrote some affirmations onto the gesso using thoughts from an article torn from "The Science of Mind" magazine. I absolutely love this article because I am into the "spring" of the second half of my life and find it hard at times to accept this natural progression with grace!

Geeze!

Click the pages to enlarge them if you'd like to read this.

Finally to finish it up I uploaded it into Photo Shop and added the map background and digitally burned the edges.

Isn't this a beautiful picture...


Next experiment

I painted gesso onto a piece of journal sized paper then let it dry. I was disappointed with the gesso because it was so thin and seemed like plain ole' white paint. BUT... when I began adding my paint and doodles to it I was amazed how it felt for lack of a better description. The paint glided on so smooth, the pencil was so crisp and was very, very forgivable and erasable when I didn't like what I did!

Now I am pleased! :-)

Last experiment

First, I let my gesso dry out again until it was thick enough to blob on the canvas. I got one of my photos from a hairdressing contest that I entered then smushed it down so it squished out from under the photo. I also used some rubber stamps to add more texture. My beautiful model is Daisy and is one of my best friends who happens to be

just as beautiful on the inside as well!

Here is the original photo. My son Brian was the photographer that year.

AND...we made it to the top 10 finalists that year!

I deleted the back ground with the "magic wand" in my Photo Shop CS3 then printed it out and doodled on Daisy's photo, as you can tell here...

This is a copy of an article my Mom sent to me at a time of my life when I was really needing to hear this wisdom called "Diamond Dust".

She cut it out from the "Christian Science Monitor", which she read faithfully.

Click on it to enlarge it so you can read this beautiful article.

Then with Photo Shop I made it a layer that was then added behind Daisy.

One of Angela Cartwright's awesome papers is my final background to this finished piece.

I'm too tired to check for typo's and gibber jabber right now

but have a great hair day!

Becci