A Place of Calm and Contemplation

I am sort of looking at my August page a place for calm and contemplation. While in Japan I fell in love with the idea of a covered porch where you could sit and enjoy nature.

I didn't have any digital photos of the wonderful wood porches we sat on in Japan looking at gardens or relaxing as we waited for the rain to stop. The sense of peace and rightness of those settings still offers it's calmness through my memories.

The porch I chose as my calm spot for this piece was from one of the smaller mansions in Newport. The Dragon roof supports are from the front porch of the same house. The pond with it's rainbow are from Sisson Pond that I visited almost weekly for the entire year of 2005 documenting the changes as the seasons changed.

I combined them to make a dream porch where I could go mentally to find calm and contemplate the transformation that I am embarking on. As I add more physical activity and other changes in my life I have a feeling that a place that I can mentally go to just "be" will hold a certain appeal. I am not sure what else this piece will mean to me as I begin working on it but am looking forward to finding out.

Now to the how's and what's of the piece. The pond is printed onto Cre8 fabric "paper" The porch and the dragon supports are printed onto an paper by Canson that is designed for acrylic painting that I got from Michaels. It came as 9" x 12" and I cut it down to fit the printer. It looks a little like canvas but is cheaper than "canvas paper". It was easy to print on and I don't think it will be hard to bead through. I sprayed the printed pages of "canvas" with poly-acrylic to protect the surface. I cut away the sections I didn't want (the background on the porch etc) and glued the layers together. I made the second dragon support a separate piece that I will bead and then add so that it will add a little more dimension to the piece. You can see the piece with and with out the 2nd dragon in the photos. I added a bit of added color with markers although most of it will be covered up with beads and/or sequins.

Did I mention that I am going to try using sequins for the first time? I have seen some really neat pages that people are doing using sequins and thought that they would make really great scales for my dragon.

I changed the photos out for the end of July so that you can see them better and that they will actually enlarge so that you can see the details better. I am still working out how big the photos files should be. Hope that they work better now.

As for the first day of the new plan, life or however you want to look at it; the day went well, the gym went well and my mental outlook is very positive. To read more check out my Artistic Kreations and Passions Blog For everyone who is cheering me on Thanks and for those of you who are joining from afar good luck as we set out to transform our lives.

Love and Blessings to you all, Angie