Banner Girl

This morning finds me sitting on the couch with complete silence. Mark it down as an Important Day to Remember. Whoa! It's over now. There's a child helping himself to breakfast. Dang---see how short that was? That moment of peace? But having savored even two seconds of solitude will wash a sense of calm over my whole day.

That's the intro. Now for the goods.

I lead a Sunday School opening on---you guessed it---Sunday mornings. It's fifteen minutes of raucous guitar and complete anarchy with children ages 3-9. Then I send them off to their teachers who must live with the consequences of my rash actions. Yes, I get weird pleasure out of this. Don't know why, not planning to analyze.

So, for my opening room, I've been mulling over some new art, namely a banner celebrating Palm Sunday----something springy and festive. Saturday night, I made the jump. I bent my will upon jumping in while disregarding the fact that there is no clear space in my painting area---it is full of kid's coats and school stuff and furniture I mean to reupholstered (see 'about me' to the right). Disregarding the fact that there is no room on the table where I mix dye---it is covered with laundry, the clean and the unclean. And completely ignoring the fact that my loving husband is upstairs single handedly putting to bed three unruly children. So determined was I to have my way.

I began by sketching in Corel Photo Paint:


Then I proceeded to prepare fabric and supplies. Translate: rifling through piles looking for the #$%^!# Ann Johnson 'Color by Design' book that I know is around somewhere---I know I've run by it recently. Translation #2: being disgusted at the old batch of corn dextrin paste that is discovered to be moldy and the fact that I don't seem to have any fresh corn dextrin. Oh look! I apparently ordered a 10# box of it last fall. See? I'm a genius after all.

O.k., moving on....we have sketch, we have supplies. We begin:


The words are painted in corn dextrin resist and are drying. The palm frond is painted with a greeny black mx dye--no thickener. There are three fronds in the sketch, but I'm happy with one big frond. I'm feeling really loose and in a groove at this point. I decide to mix up some turquoise, lighten my outline green and add a little yellow to it.


Life is good. Now for the background wash. But the corn dextrin's not dry. I coax it along with a hair dryer and ponder the fact that I could've started earlier in the day and allowed the dextrin to dry on it's own. But creative geniuses are suppose to have completely messed up internal clocks, right? I'm happy with the hair dryer. It seems to be working quickly.

So, I begin to lay down the background wash, mixing colors as I go. All is well.


Then I identify the tingling feeling I had in my chest while hairdrying: the resist is not completely dry. There could be some serious bleeding when the dye hits the resist. As the dye runs into the resist area, I can see it bleeding under the fabric and I...I....well, in the words of the always wise, ever eloquent C-3PO....

"I'm Scrap!"