'If you make happiness your goal, then you're not going to get to it… The goal should be an interesting life."

Dorothy Rowe

Saturday 22 March 2008

Paper making: part 2

The purpose of all the paper making was to produce a background for stitch [we have to make 8 samples where we have made the backgrounds ourselves.] Of course, I had forgotten that the piece was supposed to be inspired by our research topic – in my case, 20th century art. If I had remembered that I would have thought more carefully about the colours I used. I did think about making some more paper – but a] I didn’t have time and b] the blender had blown up. [Subsequent testing suggests it hadn't after all.]

So – what could I use as inspiration? Fortunately I have a very linear mind and ‘paper’ made me think ‘collage’ made me think ‘Picasso’. And Googling led me to this:

http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%AA%D7%9E%D7%95%D7%A0%D7%94:Picasso_Collage.jpg

[No, I don’t know what the language is!]

So here is my tribute to Picasso – not finished yet. The background is some of the paper I made last week, there is ‘some I made earlier’ [British joke, lost on anyone who has never watched ‘Blue Peter’] and some ‘found objects’ as well [and will be more].

I think I may have mentioned before that for relaxation I like to make things following other people’s patterns – so this little bag was made from instructions on ‘Quiltwow’ by Di Goodwin. Of course I can’t follow instructions to the letter – why use bought bin bags and shower plastic when you have plastic bags to keep out of the landfill? So this was made from a Damart bag and a transparent carrier bag of the type I seem to collect at shows. It went together very easily apart from the grommets – grommets and I don’t get on.

It was difficult to photograph because the shiny surface reflected the light – and of course it's far too small [ about 5" by 7"] to be of any use as a handbag for anyone who hauls around as much as I do. I think the volume of one’s handbag increases exponentially with one’s age …

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