Tuesday, May 15, 2012

The Devil and Mary Ann*

One of the drawbacks of working a 9 to 5 job, at least for me, is having to go to bed by a reasonable time in order to be a reasonably functioning person on the job the next day.  Nevertheless, last night, I stayed up past my bedtime.  I could say the devil made me do it but in reality, I hold Mary Ann Moss responsible.

On Sunday, Miss Mary Ann posted this blog post in which she showed some pictures of a ledger book to which she was adding paint and decorative tape.  I was inspired to do the same with a ledger book I had bought back in January when I was in Port Townsend.  Just recently, my friend Laurie had asked me if I had done anything with that book and I'd had to admit that I hadn't.  Yet.

I didn't read MA's post until yesterday and then had to wait until I got home from the Journal Junkies meeting last night before I could make a start, which is why I ended up staying up late.  I was still somewhat hesitant to begin but Mary Ann had sent me an email saying "do it!" (much like that little devil that sits on your shoulder and whispers in your ear!) and I could no longer resist.

So I opened the book and - deep breath! - slowly began to add some tape. 


Then I got a little braver and started adding paint.  Mostly using my Adirondack dabbers and smooshing the paint around with a wet wipe.  (Yes, "smooshing" is a word that is very often used in the art world to describe this highly skilled technique.)

After that, I used my Sharpie paint markers and added some lines and dots and circles here and there.

I'm quite pleased with the final result on these pages:

especially the way the original ledger entries show through here and there.

As you can see, the colours are soft and mostly pastel.  Not that that is a bad thing but I think those are my go to colours when I am not feeling quite as brave as I could be.  I woke up this morning thinking, why didn't I use bolder colours?!  Next time.

So thank you, Mary Ann, for once again inspiring me to be brave and try something new.  I'm not sure what the next steps are for this ledger but at least and at last, I have begun.  And it felt devilishly good.

* with apologies to Catherine Cookson, who wrote a book with this title, I thought it was perfect for this blog post!

No comments: