Seven Day Covenant: Day 3. Good Friday. VUMAP and a Black Cat. Original Art. Collage. Photography.

Day 3.
Eco-collage.
A Cross of String.
Black Cat and Gold Triangles.
~Ally.

Good Friday.

After completing this Eco-collage today, it occurred to me that tomorrow being Good Friday: The timing couldn't be more appropriate to share it. And I can't think of a better title for this piece now than Good Friday.

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Artist's Journaling and my new Eco-Collages.

After completing a short course recently on Artist's Journaling with Sally Cooper: I'm starting to make some small Eco-collages: Which eventually will pave the way for other pieces that will incorporate drawing and painting. ~Ally. Seven Day Covenant: Day 2. A Gratitude Tag.

For now, these Eco-collages are more like 'warm-up excercises' for me and they'll be pasted into my personal Artist's Journal. However, the intention here is also to develop them as another product to add to my Homesteaders Co-op Store. ~Ally. Seven Day Covenant: Day 2. A Gratitude Tag.

Silvia Beneforti's pocket notebook: Camu Robin.

I wanted a VERY special notebook to encourage my Creative Muse to begin creating my Eco-collages and so it was incredibly timely to be able to purchase one of Silvia Beneforti's pocket notebooks from her Homesteaders Co-op Store: VUMAP.

By the time this photograph was taken, I'd already taken the string off the notebook. But it was beautifully tied with natural string. I shared my delight in receiving Sylvia's Camu Robin pocket journal blank notebook in Day 2: A Gratitude Tag.

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The materials used in the making of Good Friday.

• A piece of Arches Watercolour paper: Cut to: 140 mms x 95 mms which is just a fraction smaller than the size of the notebook.
• Handmade and torn paper. The paper with delicate flecks of plant material through it.
• Silvia Beneforti's VUMAP Business Card with a painting of a black cat on it.
• The string that my notebook was bound with.
• Gold paper.
• Silk threads.
• Dried hydrangeas.

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The first stage.

• A piece of handmade paper was carefully torn so that soft edges were produced.
  TIP: A good way to do this is to 'paint' a line with water and a fine brush, where the paper is to be torn. The paper will soften, making it easier to tear.
• The two pieces of torn paper were pasted onto the watercolour paper.
• Silvia's VUMAP Business Card was positioned and pasted onto the torn paper.
• The string was measured and cut. The two pieces that would form the 'cross' were knotted together and stretched out to their respective edges. Quite fiddly to paste down, but then wrapping the string around the back, worked beautifully. Next time you won't even see where the string has been pasted down.

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Life at Play.

A covenant of making and sharing a new artwork every day for a week is already proving to be quite a 'challenge' for me. It seems like Life likes to throw unthinkable challenges our way as soon as we make our intentions clear ~ To ourselves and then to others. I guess it was these 'unknowns' that in the past have always prevented me from making any sort of commitment to create and post daily.

Today's curveball: I didn't finish yesterday's post until the early hours of the morning. Tired but happy, I'd just closed my eyes and was about to drift into sleep when a brilliant flash of light lit up my room. Because I was so tired, I thought maybe I'd imagined it. I knew I hadn't, but had no other explanation.

After just a few hours of sleep, I woke and went outside to look at the stars and the growing full moon. And then I realized what the flash had been. Just outside my window are the main overhead electricity cables ~ And one of them was burning, so that every 5 to 10 minutes it would erupt into a flame with sparkles and then an explosion of light.

The light had also woken our next door neighbours on both sides, so quite an audience was gathering. I rang the fire brigade and soon we could hear distant sirens getting closer. It was not yet dawn, so the scene was quite surreal with wires sparking and smoking and the added red and blue lights flashing from the fire truck.

The 'story' continued well into the morning.

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Golden Triangles, Silk Threads and dried Hydrageas.

Three small golden triangles were positioned beside the business card and then two 'lines' of dried hydrangeas and petals were added. The final touch: Teased out silk threads emphasizing the vertical line of the cross.

Even though I used 300 gsm Watercolour paper, under the burden of being continually wet with the paste, the paper buckled. The next step will be to dampen the back of the paper and flatten the work (Using eco-friendly brown baking paper with a few books on top to weight the work down) and then pasting it into my Camu Robin notebook.

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Another Current Project.

Feathers that have been incorporated into so many of my art pieces from collage work to ephemeral arrangements are also a prominent part of a range of eco-friendly products that I'm in the process of developing. They'll be available soon from my Homesteaders Co-Op Store: Eco Curios: Magical wands and hats, poles and figures as well as small baskets and containers.

And eventually, images inspired by these curios will also be available in my MakersPlace Gallery.

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Magical Wands.

Just a glimpse of my first Magical Wand: With all the feathers freely given by the wild ducks at the Roseville Lake.

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Imagine.
All the wonderful things.
That you could wish for. If you had:
A MAGICAL WAND.
~Ally.

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A heart that is holding infinite possibilities.
A creative who is learning to trust the mystery of what will be.
A spirit that is willing to fly into new creative realms and share the journey. ~Ally.

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My Seven Day Covenant.

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Photography: ©Alison Lee Cousland.
SONY Mark2 A7.

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