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...
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| 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?
