A card a week for a year: Week 3

So after migraine induced delay here it is:

card #3 is wordless, I wanted the meaning to come from the images. Please share your thoughts on this cards meaning in comments, I'd love to hear what your impressions are. As I don't wish to skew any ideas with my own statement, I'll be posting the cards meaning for me in tomorrow's post.

One card a week for 52 weeks. Each card depicting a single word or phrase to be used in an affirmation deck at the end of the year. Once again; I'm willing to take any word or phrase suggestions that you all may have, leave a comment with your suggestion if you've got one.




Materials:

• Strathmore ATC card
• Photocopy, or Photograph from magazine for image transfer*
• Pencils
• Transparent Liquid Sculpey
• Paint brush for application of liquid Sculpey
• Stiff bristle paint brush
• Water
• a container big enough to soak your transferred images
• Scissors
• Glue
*please note that images taken from magazines are copyrighted materials and yo use these images you must, must, must, ask permission of the originator. As I was using bits and pieces of a photograph that isn't mine and this card is going to be for personal use I am giving the originator credit here and on the back of the card.

Copyright infringement is bad, very very bad. To use an image taken or created by another for monetary gain is stealing that image, no matter what anyone says. Now stepping off the soapbox.

The Process:
Last week I got a few books on altering books and objects out of the library to help out with the inspiration. As a result I got really turned on to the idea of doing an image transfer on my next card.

While working for the local art supply company here in BC, I managed to acquire a fairly good sized (but surprisingly small if you think about it) stash of art supplies. In this stash I happen to have bottle of liquid Sculpey, which I had read during a spurt of copy writing for ads and catalogues was good for using to transfer images.

So I dug into the Ikea art supply armoire, pulled out the printmaking/bookmaking box and yanked out the never before opened and not really looked at since I bought it (side note: remind me to tell you about why I think I didn't fill every nook and cranny of my home with art supplies while I had the excellent discount and daily access to said supplies, some time.) Liquid Transparent Sculpey package. I read the instructions and immediately chose the second method of transfer as it didn't involve using a sheet of glass, just a direct application to the image with a brush then a quick stint in an oven to set the Sculpey and then a stint removing the paper from said Sculpey.

Since I'd never used this product before, I read the instructions, visited the website and did a test to see how it worked. Using graphite and coloured pencil I did a quick sketch of a dancing jester like figure and then brushed on the Sculpey. Following the baking directions I put the drawing into the oven for 15 minutes at ???F. Following baking I dropped the sketch into a container of water and started rubbing off the paper from the drawing. From this test I learned that the Sculpey needed to be applied a little thicker to avoid tearing when the paper was being scraped off. I also learned that using a smoother paper with less tooth would help too.


Second round: I used cut up pieces of a photograph taken by Keith king from the September 2006 edition of Cookie Magazine; Please see my rant in the Materials section of this post, and slathered on the liquid Sculpey, made a second drawing of a person surfing on a blue surfboard and layered some Sculpey there too. I baked the images and let them soak for awhile to soften the paper before removal.

This step takes a good dose of patience. To remove the paper I used a stiff bristle brush and rubbed gently with my fingers until all that is left are the pigments from the pencil drawing and the ink from the magazine image (here's where the patience comes in, it took about 3 hours of soaking and rubbing the paper in order to remove it from the solid polymer) I found that the stiff brush worked best to remove the last little bit of paper fiber and that gently rubbing the surface with a finger tip worked well to remove the bulk of the paper. Both drawing and magazine image were fairly transparent one the paper was removed.

Next I arranged the different sculpey layers on the ATC card and glued each piece down on the card using more liquid sculpey followed by a another stint in the oven. I used the liquid sculpey as the final glue to ensure a hard clear surface. Regular PVA glue would also work



Post your thoughts on this weeks card and check back tomorrow to see what my statement is.