Art du Beacoup Jours

Oh yeah, I forgot, I’m a self-declared artist, taking a long break from it all and then coming up with some very bad French.  The title is supposed to translate to “art of many days” because I’m pretty sure this creation could pass for art and it certainly was many days in the making.  But none of it can in any way be blamed on the French.  Just so that’s clear.

This is melted crayon on an old denuded clock face.  On an opposite wall the delightful mirror below, which survived the garage sale because I could not bring myself to part with it,  has been photographed to include the reflection of the above round shaped thing awaiting inspiration.  It hung there all white and boring for a very long time.  Weeks I guess, but eventually I got tired of looking at it and the reflection of it too.

Now I’m going to show you a photo of a big bucket/waste basket full of markers and crayons.  Only demented grandmas have such things, never mind the ones who pause to take pictures of them.

The plastic bag on top is one of those large freezer zip lock ones, (so a LOT of crayons in there) and when my granddaughters were here looking for something to do I suggested peeling the paper off some of them.  One of the girls wisely wandered off to watch tv, but the other one was wildly enthusiastic about the idea and stripped the paper off every last one of them. You never know with kids, so don’t be afraid to suggest totally bizarre and tedious activités to them which you don’t want to do yourself.

Then we messed around melting wax with an iron and a blow dryer.  This is my favourite result on paper.

If you heat and mix the colours too much they just get muddy but we saved this one with a lot of white on top.

Okay! One more snapshot in the series “ways I have been messing about for months”.

Another crayon creation on canvas, and below it three little, quite possibly completely useless, books I made.

You start off with a cereal box,  use the thin side for the spine of the book and cut out whatever book shape you want.  Then you cover them inside and out with glued on paper, complete with decor.  I had a couple of jewelry pieces left over from a failed jewelry making stage of my life and the playing cards are from a miniature deck which was a prize from one of our Christmas cracker snapper things.  I’m sure that’s not an accurate name.  Too bad I don’t know what they’re called in French.  The pages are arranged in bunches and sewn in using a needle and thread, after punching aligned holes with a push-pin in the paper and the spines .  It was pretty labour intensive especially once the novelty wore off and I was questioning my sanity for thinking three of the damned things was a good idea.  Probably won’t try that again.  So these should one day be ridiculously valuable because they are rare.  Remember that when you see them in a garage sale.

Enough sharing for one day.  Thanks for looking.  Now get back to whatever important thing you were up to on this beautiful sunny April Sunday.