Thursday, October 7, 2010

Background love

I love making backgrounds so much that sometimes it's all I do.     
I think the pressure is completely off when you're making backgrounds, because they're....well...just backgrounds. They need to have no focal point, in fact, they need to have no point at all! ;-)
 
I spent some time this week starting to collage backgrounds into a spiral sketchbook, that will become one of my next journals.
It's just patterns and shapes and structures and to me it's the purest form of art play.
The pages of the sketchbook are A4 size, which means they measure about 21x30 cm.
The samples in this post are just the beginning and I intend to put other stuff on these pages and little interactives things like envelopes and tags and tabs and stuff like that.
I have no idea yet how I'm going to do all that, but for now I'm just having fun with paper and gel medium. Just tearing it up and pasting it down.
All the paper in these backgrounds is from the big K&Company paper pad that I told you about in an earlier post. I have no affiliation with them, but for some reason I always buy their pads 'cause they're just so beautiful. The thinner paper in this big pad is just perfect for collage. I love it.
Finally I'll show you the front cover of the journal. This is not K&Company paper, but from a pad of really thick doublesided paper by Tilda. I chose this paper, because the cover of the sketchbook was a lot flimsier than the sketch/watercolor paper inside it. So I needed some thickness for the cover.
I like the paper, but I'm not too thrilled with what I did with it. It's just too....scrapbooky. I mean no offence to all you scrapbookers out there, but what I mean is that it's so straight and neat. It just doesn't feel like me. I tried to make it a little more playful with some stamps, but it's just not working for me. I may go over it alltogether and do something completely different. We'll see.