Orange. I have a difficult relationship with bold colours and none more so than orange. It is too vivid, too bright, too much. The last time I recall using it in a collage was at the beginning of the autumn, when I made a seasonal background paper.
So when Wednesday Stamper announced its Orange challenge today, my initial reaction was: “Forget about it.” But it somehow felt wrong. Stretching our creativity is the whole purpose of joining a challenge, and here I was chickening out at the first glimpse of orangey brightness.
No, I’d prove to myself I could work in orange. Much to my surprise, my treasure chest yielded a vast array of orange stuff to use, which must have been there since Halloween (when I had ditched the orange theme and decorated the house in cream and white instead).
Watercolours in varying shade of orange, from almost yellow to burnt, provided the background for the piece. On top of the watercolour paper, I collaged bits and pieces of photocopied ephemera and papers I had made, including the autumn one when I had last used orange which, I now realise, I had never really used. Another wash of watercolour gave the whole background an orange tint.
Once the paper dried, I stamped it with a few images from my Non Sequitur Memories of Italy plate (yes, I am obsessed by it!). Until now, I didn’t really have any idea of what I was making. But as I went on to cut a vintage butterfly and a cabinet card portraying a small Victorian boy, the proverbial light bulb went on in my head. I’d turn the boy into a flower fairy.
I glued the butterfly wings to the boy and cut a bunch of roses to sit him on. And that’s where I made the mistake. As I was adhering the roses onto the background I decided to cut off the overhanging bits. It seemed like a good idea at the time…except that once I cut the overhand off, the piece looked too straight and narrow. It was awful, and, what’s worse, I had no other roses to replace the ones I had erroneously cut up. Argh!
But then, my eye fell on a postal stamp, and I had an inspiration. The stamp, cut and adhered to the piece, would provide the visual overhanging the piece needed to escape its geometric straitjacket. Quite what a postal stamp has to do with a flower fairy, I am not sure—a postal flower fairy perhaps?
Nonetheless, I like how the piece turned out, especially after I added a little bow to finish it all off. So, without further ado, may I introduce the world’s first postal flower fairy.
