Ninth Day of Christmas

On the Ninth Day of Christmas

I give to you......

Hands and

Mini file pockets

First about "hands": In addition to taking pictures of hands, I like to clip all the hands from the slick department store advertisements included with the newspaper.

I use them as a model for sketching a hand on a painting.

Sometimes, I use them in the collage.

Here is an important tip: use glue stick to glue them down rather than gel medium. After the glue stick is dry, then paint over the hand with a gel medium. For this I prefer Soft Gel Gloss. Then proceed to paint over the hand if you like. I have found that attaching this colored newsprint with gel medium causes it to wrinkle and not adhere smoothly.

I also use the hand as a template or pattern to trace around on my canvas and then paint.

So clip those hands.

...... then what to do with them?????

Making these little mini file pockets is an exercise I do when I'm between inspiration and inspiration.

You've been there. I know you have.

I reuse old file folders from my office to make these.

I cut them down and then play with all the left over bits and pieces of wallpaper, candy wrappers, tissue, and anything else floating around on the work surface. I glue. I stamp. I write. I paint. I stencil.

All the while, Norah'S just smiling and thinking and dancing and singing and dreaming and ......

then,
I have the neatest little pocket to keep my hands and fun stuff in.

And

a fresh new surge of inspiration.

I would show you where I keep these but you know I cleaned off my big work table and it looks really good and so ready for fun ART. But when I turned around and looked at my other work area on the cabinet, where I keep these file pockets handy and where I do my painting, lo and behold it is piled high with stuff and I don't know how that happened.

More later,

Sharon