Artsy Fartsy

I love art, although I cannot paint and I cannot draw. God gave me just enough of those skills to be able to finger paint and draw stick figures in grade school but not a smidgen more. But, I love art. I believe others in the same boat as I say they have an appreciation for art. That's me - can't do it but I sure do appreciate the heck out of it!

One well known painting that my man and I both appreciate is Grant Wood's "American Gothic" - you know the painting with the old dour-faced man and woman standing in front of a house with a Gothic window. So it wasn't too surprising (to me anyway) that when I was taking pictures of my man and the wild child in the barn at my in-laws and we spotted a pitchfork laying around, we both looked at each other and simultaneously said, "American Gothic!" The wild child had no idea what we were talking about, but she cooperated and gave us her best dour face possible. The end result was the picture in this layout which I immediately fell in love with! I came up with the East Texas Gothic title before I even finished taking the picture.

There are two things that I am especially proud of on this layout. The first is how my hinges turned out. Those hinges are from Tim Holtz's grungeboard line. I'm not sure what exactly grungeboard is made of, but it has this god-awful kind of mildewy smell that makes me want to gag a little whenever I first open the packaging! It's some kind of cardboard-like material in appearance, but it has a more rubbery texture to it. Grungeboard holds paint and glimmer mist extremely well and is very easy to work with. You just have to get past the smell which thankfully wears off after the grungeboard has a chance to air out. Anyway, I wanted the hinges to have a leather look to them so I painted them with Tim Holtz crackle paint, using a color called Vintage Photo. Then I very lightly sprayed a light mist of candy apple red Glimmer Mist and immediately blotted with a paper towel. I did this to give the hinge some subtle warmer red tones. Finally, I used a distress ink pad, also in Vintage Photo, and rubbed it across the raised parts of the hinge to add depth. Voila! Faux leather hinges.

The second thing I am especially proud of is my fabric element in the layout - this is proof that you really aren't limited to the stickers and embellishments on the scrapbooking aisles of your store. I used a strip of Aida cloth from my cross-stitching supplies that have been collecting dust in my storage closet for the past several years. To give the cut piece of cloth a distressed look, I used a wire brush (which I "borrowed" from my man's tool collection) and rubbed it quickly along the edges of the material which pulled the threads and caused the cloth to fray. I then rubbed my distress ink pad along the top of the cloth to give it an aged appearance. Simple and easy!

So, there you have it - my new way to appreciate art. I wonder what painting I should try to recreate next? Perhaps Whistler's "Portrait of the Artist's Mother" or Picasso's "The Tragedy." Any suggestions?