The Tattered Rose: HOMAGE TO THE BIRDS!

This is a collage I gifted to my Sister.

Last Christmas I bought my sister a gift of art supplies to use in her own beautiful artwork and told her as much a couple of days before Christmas. She told me she was disappointed to know this because she had hoped to receive something hand crafted by me. (This sounds almost too good to be true, but I wanted to believe.) In case she wasn’t just being nice, I couldn’t resist the urge to create a piece of art just for her - but I only had 2 days left! I already had made a base sheet on canvas paper as per the instruction in Cloth Paper Scissors in an article by Kelli Rae Roberts (who recently published a book on the same topic). It is a collage of bits and pieces of scrap papers, text, stamped or inked images. Then the main event is layered over the top of these and covered with paint, gesso, or ink and then wiped off so that some of the layer underneath peeks through. I decided that I would make the first of a pair of green works. I constructed the work from pics and text saved from magazines and the computer generated phrases "Don’t forget the birds!". I also stamped white hearts and "Hot" into the gel medium while it was still soft to give the work depth. After this was dry, I wrote randomly in white gel pen the phrase "Bring back the bees" and added black musical note brads which I spotted with white gesso so they wouldn’t look so new (just snap the prongs off with wire cutters). I painted some white silk leaf ribbon various shades of green and attached down one side. Then I added a little three dimensional compass and a smooth pebble with the work "Nature" inscribed on it. For the final touch I used a piece of vintage white embossed wallpaper to construct a bird feed that stands out from the page. I painted it with Golden fluid acrylic paint in bronze and then dry brushed it with a turquoise color to make it look like it had a patina. I glued real bird seed inside the feeder.

Here's a closeup to show the dimension.