Late on the 4th

I should be in bed, given that I'm not feeling well, but I'm sitting up waiting for my teenage daughter to come back from our local fireworks display. So I thought I would give an update.

The last thing I finished was a fugly (daughter's term) ATC--my second--which I made for the arttechniquesatc list's moon challenge. The theory of how I did it was okay, I think--started with paint swatches on cardboard, ripped the green one into a foliage border shape and cut that and the blue one to ATC size, then applied a "full moon" (my thumbprint in white stamping ink), and added stars and moon edging with iridescent glass paint. But then I decided to use the green stamp pad and my thumb to add visual texture to the foliage with prints. Bad idea. Then things got worse as I decided the scene needed a bird. Well, it was a night scene, and the bird I added (leather cord tied in a knot) looked totally out of context. Then there was this empty space in the middle, so I glued on a Zuni bear bead my daughter found in my bead soup.

Well, the whole thing was really ugly, but I went ahead and posted it anyway (but I'm not going to post it here--I'll spare you). At first I was really annoyed and embarrassed, but then I realized that I had learned some things from the experience--leather cord does not flatten when glued to an ATC if it is in a knot; fast and messy looks, well, fast and messy (usually); and there is an upper limit to the amount of E6000 you want to use with a bead even if you want it to hold good and tight. Plus you have to be very careful picking sky colors. So it wasn't a wasted experience by any means. I also thought about what I learned from Art and Fear--in any artist's work there will be great stuff, good stuff, average stuff, and stinkers (my term, not theirs). And if you do enough work, you will produce stinkers, especially when learning new techniques or flying by the seat of your pants.

So, it's chalk one up to experience and move on to bigger and better things! Like the Micro Twickie book I am working on (my first altered boook), which unlike the fugly card is coming along and looking decent enough considering it's my first (my struggle being to keep it from looking too scrapbooky, which it probably still does). Well, that's a topic for another day.