Good Fortunes

Here's a painting technique that is easy and versatile and could be used for a lot of different things. On this sheet, I didn't cover the entire page with color, but when you do, it looks almost like stained glass. As I look at these photos, I wish I'd painted more of the white.

I used blue painter's tape to block out small areas of the paper. It's perfect because it has "low tack" and doesn't leave a residue. I filled a dropper with ink and then, not squeezing the bulb, used it to draw lines across the paper. I then took a dry brush and swept across the wet inks. This gave a crosshatched result and some shading. I let that dry about 45 seconds then took a contrasting ink and with a damp brush, painted in some of the white areas. I used acrylic inks to keep it transparent. The purple ink was in a dropper but didn't do as well as the black with the brush. A different kind of ink. It would have been better to use it for painting areas rather than a big swash, I think.

I didn't start out to make something to use fortune cookie fortunes, I was just experimenting, but then, the spaces were the perfect size and I needed to make a retirement card and I had a big bowl of saved fortunes, so . . . there you have it. . . the art process in motion.

The Candle Card

Here's a picture of the birthday candle card I made last weekend. The best part of the experience is opening it to the interlacing candles. I learned a lot with this exercise and would definitely be able to improve on the next one. Because I didn't really have a plan and had not done one before, I ended up having to overlap and add a few small candles to get to the desired number. It worked out and gave it a somewhat avant garde look. The double color paper (one side hot pink; one side orange) was a nice touch and gave it more flair (flare:)

Now that I understand how the interlacing idea works (when you glue a candle to one side of the peak, it lays one direction; gluing to the other side, then, lays the opposite direction, the idea being to alternate spots on the peak to get the interlacing), I know to determine the number of candles per peak and plan the number of peaks accordingly. This card was about 4 inches tall.