Tuesday, May 20

Happy 30th Wedding Anniversary!!

I can believe it! Today is the 30th Anniversary of my parent's wedding day. They were married on May 20th, 1978 in Port Arthur, TX. Last weekend we gathered and watched them renew their vows! Congratulations!

The purpose of this post is to explain the art work I made for their gift. I asked my Dad to send a bunch of photos so I could be inspired. He sent pictures of them dating and of their wedding day. I chose this one:


They look so happy! Then I cropped the photo and altered the coloring. Here is what I came up with:

I printed a bunch out and laid them all over the floor. I was still trying to figure it out. I really like the faces next to each other and the color combination, but I wanted to take it further. So I thought, what would this look like all crumbled up? I just started balling up paper and really distressing the image. I was feeling it. Then I thought of tea dying the images and pasting them all together. I recently saw a film about an artist who tea dyes images and uses them in their work. So I just went for it. I started a pot of water on the stove and got out 5 family size bags of Lipton tea and put myself to work.

I used an 18 x 24 sheet of Bristol board, laid out the design and started laying tea dyed, wet stripes of crinkled paper. I brushed on glue under and over the stripes of paper. It was looking awesome! I framed the images in left over white paper that was tea dyed and distressed. I tried to get a few different shades of the tea dye by allowing the paper to soak for various amounts of time. I put it all together in a couple of days and really loved the outcome. A few things I learned: when dying anything you must keep the liquid at an almost boiling temperature (adding salt also helps) and wet paper curls when it dries. To flatten it out I laid it under a board to weight it down. That's it! Here is the finally product so Enjoy! And congrats to my rents for making their love last 30 years!



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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Beautiful! Congrats to your parents!

Can't wait to see new stuff. :)