Today's Lesson From The Craft Room: Take Bold Steps!
Today I wanted to share with you the second piece I created in my encaustic class last week at Victoria Eubanks Studio. Victoria had suggested we bring bits of ephemera and scraps of paper/fibers/knick-knacks with us to the workshop. I did a bit of scavenging in my craft room prior to heading to the class and grabbed a Polaroid photo of our house, some polymer clay tiles I had made, some dictionary pages, and some odds and ends. I began this second encaustic piece with a piece of mdf board. I glued down a piece of dictionary page and then asked if adhering a photo would work. I was told it would and was asked if I wanted to use the original photo or make a black & white photo copy of it. I had taken this picture with a Polaroid camera that I purchased off of ebay. It was my first successful Polaroid (I tried to take a picture before reading the directions and the first picture didn't come out - after reading the directions this second photo worked perfectly...lesson learned :) The picture is of the back of our house as we began our house-painting project. I decided to take a bold step and believe that whatever I would do with the photo it would somehow work out. So, rather than photocopy or preserve the photo in some way, I just went for it!!!! I had to scratch the photo up with sandpaper in order to give it some "tooth" for the wax to grab onto. Then I added glue to the back of the photo and adhered it to the board and then, once the glue dried, on went the first layer of encaustic medium! The photo stayed clear and the piece was then built from there! I'm not sure what will happen over time to the photo - it may fade over the years even though it is encased in the medium. No matter what happens, this piece will always be a reminder to me - not just of the effort and enjoyment of painting the house, but also of always having the courage to take bold steps!
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