I finally got my mini collages finished. It really shouldn’t have taken this long but I kept over-gel medium-ing them, leaving brush strokes and leading to image discolouration - doh! But they do look so cute altogether, don’t you think? 
I won an auction for these really old wooden printing blocks from a Welsh press. They smell old and musty, and there are a couple of letters missing (think I’m needing B, X, and Z) but I love them! I can’t wait to start using them, I wonder how well they print. The fonts look pretty cool, the letters are so large because they were used for printing posters.
I have finally managed to get some decent pics of my work in Paula’s book. It feels like I sepnt a lot of time collecting the pieces I wanted to use, and figuring out the best way to use them. Therefore, actually looking at the finished piece of work now, feels like a bit of an anti-climax, because although I think the spread looks good, it doesn’t really express the work that went into it. I started working from the back of the book because books in the orient are written, and read from the (western) back to the front, right to left, and of course top to bottom.
This is the closed spread…
The LHS page is a gorgeous fabric, and the RHS page is two japanese origami dolls on a page of acetate. I believe the dolls are more than twnnty years old, I mounted them on acetate beacuse I wanted the viewer to be able to see the work on the back of each doll. You can see the detail in the folds and the intricate bows that have been made.
The acetate page opens with a page of japanese text behind it. On the re
verse of the fabric page is a collage of Japanese matchbox labels. Some of these are almost comic, whilst others show really delicate art work. The fabric page and the acetate/text pages open out to show a traditional wood-cut print, a beautiful form of Japanese art.
Over the print, I used an extract from a manga comic, to show some contemporary Japanese art. 
To the left of the print I attached a picture of a mushroom, as a reference to the mushroom cloud that accompanies an atomic explosion. The name Enola Gay is written in and around the mushroom; the plane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima.In this spread I wanted to make reference to some of the images that come to mind when I think of Japan. Having never been there, perhaps these images are rather stereotypical. I wanted to draw from the traditional and the contempory, the historical and the present-day. I hope I have managed to accomplish this.
Again, as with my last AB, I wanted my spread to be somehow thought-provoking whilst not being maudlin.
I read about these mini pieces of art on a few Yahell groups and saw examples on various blogs, but it wasn’t until I actually cut my ‘canvas’ that I realised what scale these pieces are. Can you imagine working on 1″ squares? Yes, 1″. We all know how big an inch is, right? But to make art in that size? Crazy…. yes?
I dug out my 1″ hole punch and punched myself a teensy little square and then sat and stared at it for ages while the possibilities sank in. I found some mis-sized ATCs that I had erroneously cut from watercolour paper ages ago, but saved ‘just in case’, and punched out 6 1″ squares from it. I had already painted the paper with an acrylic wash, so went over one of the squares with some distress inks, added my collage elements and edged it with brown marker. I sealed the square with gel medium just to make sure the collage elements didn’t fall off. Have you ever tried to glue down something that is so tiny that it keeps falling off every time you touch it?? 
I think for my next mini-collage I might add more background elements, or perhaps I might use some of my paper scraps.
For now, here’s my first mini-collage - Voila! (I didn’t count on losing the clarity of the image when trying to enlarge it for viewing)
Two years ago when I went to the Big Stamp show at Alexandra Palace, I absolutely hated it, the crowds, the pushing and shoving and the ignorant people climbing over me. You’d be forgiven for thinking that these women (and I’m sorry to say it was mainly women) had never shopped or seen craft materials before! This is the reason I have given the show a wide berth since then. Even when the lovely Paula mentioned meeting up there on Sunday, I wasn’t convinced, but eventually I decided to give it a try, I could always leave if it was awful, after all.
I was really pleasantly surprised at what a good time I had. I was relatively restrained when it came to shopping (for me, anyway), there seemed to be far less people there, and I got to hang out with Paula and Stef. Idon’t know it it was the environment or the good company, but I had a really enjoyable time It’s funny, I somehow managed not to buy any stamps at all, and saw a few really good demos.
