This blog post is probably going to be a little mushy- I’m making no promises not to be, so be warned. :)
This week is my 1 year anniversary. I’m pretty excited, mostly because I love planning little gifts I can give to my husband on special occasions.
This encaustic piece was actually going to be a card when I first planned it. I saw the idea of a heart with the words “You are here” inside and I loved the idea, but I didn’t plan on making an art piece of it. As I was playing around over the weekend, however, it seemed like the perfect thing to do.
One thing I have to mention here- when I first start learning the encaustic technique a few months ago, I was using plain plywood boards. Once I finished a painting, there wasn’t a neat way to hang it without spending the money to put it in a frame, and I’m not in a position to do that right now. What I really needed, I decided, was wood that had already been prepared so that I could wire it and hang it without having to frame it.
I found a solution in what seemed to me a very unlikely place- Archiver’s, the scrapbooking store. I was there for a crop one Saturday night, and for the prize they gave out a roller of Distress Ink, some rivets, and this 6*6 square of wood, ready to hang. All I needed to do was paint it. :) Of course, I don’t think they had encaustics in mind when they stocked their stores with these, but they may have changed their minds after I walked out with 7 more of them in different sizes. Hurray for having wood frames that are ready to hang!!
Anyway, back to the mushy stuff…. Over the last year I’ve collected a lot of ephemera from our life as a married couple. Mostly ticket stubs- movies, museums, our trip to Mount Vernon, etc. I ripped a few of these into small pieces, and laid them on my wax background in the shape of a heart. I used clear wax to adhere them to the surface, and then I added the white to the top. The white covers a lot of the writing and makes it difficult to tell what’s underneath, but I really wanted my words to stand out. The phrase “You are here” was written on rice paper, and then painted to the surface with a little more clear wax. I love how the rice paper almost completely disappears into the wax, especially when it’s over a white background.
I hope my husband likes it!
