Sunday 26 June 2011

Sailing Life's Oceans

This month, the Being Creative Group theme was 'Ocean'.  True to form and what is quickly becoming 'the norm' for me, I had lots of ideas throughout the month but only sat down to do anything about it this weekend.  And so, yet again, I have only one piece to show.  

I decided I would settle for the sailing boat in the ocean idea.  I had, what I thought was the positively genius idea of using an old atlas page showing an ocean.  Leafing through my old atlas I found that the page I liked best was showing three oceans: the Atlantic, the Indian and the Southern Oceans.  Although my atlas is very old and was a hand-me-down from many years ago,  as it was the only  atlas I possess, I decided I would photocopy the page rather than actually tear it from the book.  I stuck the copy to a piece of cardboard for rigidity.


So far so good.  I felt it needed jazzing up a bit as it looked exactly what it was: a page from an atlas!  So I decided I would try out my new stash of distress inks.  I chose Broken China (blue) and Dusty Concord (mauve) and used a square of Cut 'n' Dry Foam to rub the ink over the paper ... 


gradually building up the colour until I liked what I saw.


I confess I got carried away doing this: it was so hypnotic making circular movements over the page.  It then struck me that a single sailing boat would be more effective than the fleet I had at first imagined, and the title 'Sailing Life's Oceans' just popped into my head and resonated deeply; I just knew that was the way forward.  And so, I drew a little sailing boat on thin card, cut it out, and placed it on the canvas.  Deep satisfaction; this was the way forward.  I wanted the boat to be really bright, a brilliant white, something like...like a ceramic tile.  Hmm, how on earth could I do that?  My mind wandered to the recently bought pot of Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel.  Would this work?  Worth a try, so I found the pot, the embossing ink pad, my heat gun and a pair of tweezers (I didn't want to scorch my fingers) and settled down to the task in hand.  And what a task it was!  If I tell you that the boat is less than an inch in size overall, and I had three sections to emboss, one at a time, you can perhaps imagine just how fiddly this was.  But I did it!  Patience and perseverance won the day.

And so I give you the end result... 

Sailing Life's Oceans

and the boat in close-up... 


I so thoroughly enjoyed making this and LOVE my little 'ceramic' boat.

This all came together so quickly and well.  Mr C loves it (and if you know Mr C and his shortcomings when it comes to art appreciation, you will know that that is praise indeed!) and has asked where I intend hanging it.  What better compliment can there be?

6 comments:

  1. I absolutely love what you have done to the map Debs, loved reading how you created that effect, it looks amazing! And that simple, bright white boat just makes me smile. It's so very right, what a fantastic, original piece of art - well done!

    J x

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  2. How fantastic Debs....love 'seeing' your thoughts and creative processes. Your boat is amazing...sounds really fiddly but the end result is beautiful. Brilliant compliment too - hope you do find somewhere to display Sailing Life's Oceans.
    Ali ;-)

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  3. Great work! Thanx for sharing!

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  4. I too love the little white boat; perhaps now you have done that you can try something else a little bigger?

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  5. Such a cute idea - love the boat :-)

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