It's Definitely No Easy Street

A little hide and seek today to find Psychedelic Furs - Forever Now. The album is from 1982, but I have no road trip or TDK cassette memories of this record, I feel like we listened to it when I was older. I remember Easy Street was a favourite song, and my dad would do the line up the needle thing to listen to it. He must have, because I don't remember having it on CD. I have listened to this record a lot, and I really enjoy it. I don't have a lot more to say about it. And why blog if you have nothing to say? Honestly folks (all one of you), I have no idea, but today I really wanted to talk about art.

Forever Now on Spotify

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I don't make anything easy. I have ideas, I do them without thinking them through completely, and discover more efficient ways to do them after I have finished. Well, its just part of my thought process and my learning curve. I think I am actually quite creative, and I reinvent the wheel quite frequently. The thing is, if you have never seen a wheel before, then inventing one is pretty awesome, even if someone else discovered it before you, because you didn't know about it. So I make things in my mind, and process and process. I have been noting my ideas on my phone lately, because sometimes they are gone as soon as they come. Today I came up with the solution for The Monstrosity's slats. Even though I said I would probably retire him, I am actually going to make him a few inches narrower so he fits in a 6 foot space - when I designed him I failed to factor in the additional length from the connectors., and fix his slats so they behave better. They were like suspenders that didn't hold up his pants! Enough about The Monstrosity, that wasn't my point, its just an appropriate example.

What I was going to talk about was the bookmarks I am making. I charge like $3 for these things, and I have put in so much time and I think awesomeness, I think there are going to have to be special edition ones that I charge a little more. My first batch from last year I painted the fronts and used vinyl lettering cut out from my Silhouette machine, in about 10 different fonts, all with their own challenges in weeding and sticking onto the back side of the bookmark. It was extremely tedious. Then I varnished a lot of coats on each side individually, as it never occurred to me to hang them. Sigh, part of my process. Anyway, in the end I really wasn't as happy with them as I thought I would be - they aren't a promotion item, they are a piece of artwork I sell, and my name doesn't have to be screaming on the whole back side. So this year I ordered more blanks I did a batch with different kinds of cool paper and stamped my name and I am much happier with them. BUT THEN ... I was thinking about other options for the back side, and I thought , oh yeah! - I have some choral music samples L&M was going to recycle, and I had taken some foreign language ones and Christmas ones. Okay, but plain white looks like piece of copy paper stuck on there, so ... I know! A watercolour wash. Metallic of course. Beautiful! Hey, I have BETTER idea, I will design the backs first and then plan the coordinating colours for the painting on the front! Awesome! But... now they really need something inspiring. Oooh, I have these cute little sequin things and glitter, that will be fun. So I tediously tweezer tiny foil hearts and stars to cover all the quarter notes and stuff. Adorable, but, very cutesy, lets make something a little more sophisticated. Aha! I pressed a whole bunch of plants and flowers in the summer - lets try that. So I go through the hundreds of plants I pressed and select suitable specimens. I stick those down, and as I am looking at a particularly rustic looking one with a fern frond, I think - it would look cool if I burnt the edges a little. My Opa did that with Heathcliff comics - hundreds and hundreds of them, and papered my aunts wall with them when she was a kid - it was amazing! Anyway, I rooted around for a lighter, and could fine none that would work well enough to accomplish my mission. THEN I remember I have this wood burning kit that I found in with my beading supplies last month (yeah yeah). I had to re-remember where I found it, but dug it out and went to town, I decided that I would have to do these on directly on the wood, so I could also burn and distress the wood. It came out so awesome that I did a second one - I rarely duplicate anything. I am not a production line, I am an artist. I then coated them with a matte top coat, and they were elfin' beautiful. I did a second coat and later when it was dry I planned out colours for them, and all of the other loose ones I had made. Each one was custom of the backing paper, and each painting was so beautiful. I know they are like 1x4" little things, but I plan them and make them the same as any size painting. I masked the wood burnt ones and proceeded to paint them so lovely. I came to look at them this morning when the painting had dried and I'm thrilled! I pull the masking off, and the whole distressed paper rips off, leaving the furry, shitty paper residue and my hard work is destroyed. Then I had to try and remove all the paper, and burn new paper in a way that coordinates approximately with some of the burn details on the wood. Anyway, I got that down, and I have put a much stronger top coat on, plus I don't have to mask them anymore. I did a couple others with interesting scrapbook paper, so I will make sure that the varnish fully cures before I mask it, and I will use the dollar store masking tape, not the super intense start line frog tape. So that is the epic saga of the bookmarks. Hey, if I sell all of them it was be 40 bucks in my pocket. Sigh. It doesn't matter because each one is totally original and I am very proud of them, even if they are just a little item. And I just don't think people aren't going to pay $10 for a bookmark. No matter how much work I put into them - that isn't their problem, it's mine. I didn't have to make it complicated, I wanted to - I was inspired and I feel so happy with the results. They need a second coat of varnish, so god knows what I will have to fix before they are done. Hah!

This is a really useless picture. I will save the good photography for when they are done.