I love when things seem to come together. I was able to finish the Old Friend's piece I posted about previously (see Cleaning is Like a Box of Chocolate.)
I began by spreading Golden's molding paste on the sides and backside of a 10x10 chunky canvas and then combed through it with a paint comb adding texture.
Once the molding paste dried I painted it with Golden's fluid acrylic paints in various colors & layers and then went back with transparent glaze and a baby wipe and hit the high points of the piece with the glaze. Once it was completely dried I added some printed gaffer's tape around the outside as a boarder and some rub-on numbers inside along with the book cover.
Next I added the embellishments: some shells in a small glass bottle of purple sand from Big Sir, a compass and a tag. Now it's ready to send to my friend. I love how serendipitous this piece started :-)
I contemplated several titles when writing this: Anatomy of an Idea....One Thing Leads to Another...and finally settled on a Gumpisim.
Not to long ago I bought some old books on eBay....they weren't really worth anything, but I bought them because of a couple of very old chemistry books that were included in the lot. I gave them to my son who is graduating and going off to college to study chemical engineering. He loved the books, and in the process I got some old books that I could use for my art.... I paid very little for them so for me it was definitely a win-win situation.
Speaking of the books.... while I was cleaning my work 
area and trying to make sense out of my mess organizing it, I came upon a couple of the books I mentioned previously. I began thumbing through one and noticed a sweet picture that reminded me of my best friend and I, then I read the story on the page and BLING! BLING! the idea light bulb went into overdrive, especially after I noticed the cover of the book. So of course I continued organizing and cleaning my entire work area, making it something Martha Stewart would be envious of didn't waste time getting to work on my new found idea!
Here's another pictures as my piece progresses...its not done, yet. I'm thinking of using a canvas turned around as a shadow box of sorts to mount it into it, so stay tuned.
The book Saga continues...again while desperately trying to procrastinate diligently cleaning I thumbed through yet another of those books and I came across a JACKPOT! in between the pages of the book were images that appear to have been cut out of magazines. It looks like they might have been cut out for someone to play paper dolls because outfits were cut out as well. Who knows how long they have been in this book they look to be from the 50s.
