So I received the rest of those antique hardware pieces I lovingly spoke of last weekend.
David says he’s a little concerned about my latest obsession. I think they are beautiful! And I’m hoping that by next week, I’ll have at least one example completed to give you an idea of how I plan to use these.
And as if that wasn’t enough, I got a hankering to go antique shopping yesterday on our day off. We found a new antique mall and happily spent 3 hours walking up and down the aisles. I bought several ornate wooden frames (you’ll see in a second what I plan on doing with them), found more metal hardware and even picked up a 1972 half-used business ledger.
I’m a weirdo…but I just love old paper – the way it looks, feels, even smells. And old ledgers have that perfect balance of creamy white backdrop to pale red and blue lines. Like I said, I’m weird.
I like using ledger paper in my mixed media art, but also like to paper craft with it, so here are some tags and bows I made with them last night once I got home (sorry in advance for the bad lighting).
Now to the frames.
Earlier in the week, I thought about how I could take unused frames and make them look older than they are. You know, give them a shabby-chic vintage feel. I had one mahogany red frame in particular that lost its glass counterpart (I think it broke when we moved, oh, 4 years ago) and was sitting in a bin completely unused.
I gesso’d the frame (gesso is like a sandpapery paste that gives “tooth” to a base), then painted it black, then once dried, I topped off that layer with white paint. The following day, I took some sandpaper to it to distress the paint and give it an older/worn look and voila, now it looks like a frame fitting for my latest piece (and having no glass means that you can touch the mixed media piece, which is part of the fun).
So this has been my week with making old things new and newer things appear old. I love giving cast-aways a second life…makes me feel a little better about my contribution to the earth. Now keep me away from antique shops…it’s my latest crack.
