Altering

Last week I received two books ordered from Amazon, “Living Out Loud” and “52 Projects” (also Google their names for their internet sites/ authors’ blogs). So much inspiration in these little books, so much fun awaiting! I love how art is referred to as “play”. That’s exactly what I feel. I’m on the floor, playing. Playing with color, experimenting, marvelling at my products.

A few months ago I participated in a swap-bot swap of free cards – those postcards you can pick up for free on racks in restaurants (more specifically in restrooms…). That was really fun, and although I received many beautiful cards, others I had nothing to do with, except…alter! Nowadays I try to alter everything I set my eyes on. The other day found me on the floor, painting an egg crate. It’s a small crate that had 6 eggs in it, and when i tore the top cover off I was left with a small “shadow box” in hand. So yes, altering is fun. But I was going to write about my altered postcards. I usually do all my technique experiments in a journal/book I keep for this purpose, but for the acrylics techniques, I thought it would be a good chance to use my free post cards.

I still feel like a girl-in-a-candystore whenever I talk about art. What can I say, it’s new to me, and it’s just so much fun! So painting without knowing what the outcome would look like, spritzing water on paint, using acrylic paint to stamp, experimenting with different transfers, OH THE FUN!! 🙂

First, I tried Try It Tuesday’s technique from week one. I only had three acrylic colors, so there wasn’t much deliberating or choosing, but it was fun, I love the outcome, and I must try it more and more!

Then I tried Artchix’s acetone transfer technique. I loved the results, but it was a bit difficult, and the fumes really gave me a headache. I’ll try it again, but only outdoors.

And lastly, the image transfers with acrylic – also quite difficult to get a good result, but I gave it a few tries, and I’ll have to try another tens of times before I can really make it “mine”, and understand exactly how much paint I need, which images are best to transfer, or how much time I should let it dry (if at all). I transferred a laser printed picture I downloaded from the Flickr group for images:

And then a magazine cut out: