Went back to my childhood here. There were many an evening I spent in my room with a stack of Seventeen magazines and a glue stick making collages. Generally, I was cutting out things I liked and filling the page. Maybe it was a mood board before I knew what a mood board was? In October I made a collage each day for Morning Make.
I still like my magazines and the stack from this year was falling over. Rather than ripping out the recipes or rooms I liked and recycling the rest I decided to bring the glue stick out of retirement. Each morning I did a colour wash with some watercolours then while it dried I found my images.
Some days I had a clear idea and set out to find images that worked. Other days I waited for an image to strike me. Everything was made up each day, no preplanning. Frankly, some days worked better than others. I don’t define success as a beautiful image, rather, it is about the time spent. That being said, I wasn’t always happy with what I produced.
I was game for trying new things within the month, playing with text and images, just text, just images, and always with composition. Indeed, this was an excellent month for exploring composition. As a quilter that is always a useful exercise. It also forced me to reckon with negative space. So while I didn’t love all the literal results, it was a good skill building month.
You’ve heard me say it before: Creativity Begets Creativity. Playing in a different medium with translatable skills can only ever be a good thing. At the end of this month I have a few new ideas I want to explore in fabric, my comfortable medium. I’m not sure they would have emerged without this exploration into collage.
