Making Messes (From Chaos to Conception)

This is the mess my daughter, Caitlin, and I made in the dining room on  Saturday.  

We decided to do a craft day, something we hadn't done in a long time.

So we got out the beads, and wire, and findings, and jewelry pliers and all that other stuff...

Caitlin made a very cool necklace...

...with a Celtic knot charm, a key, and one of those little pins, to which she added a pearl.  (She didn't want me to take her picture, because she "hadn't even showered yet".)

I, on the other hand, just made a mess.

Sunny and Arlo did not get to make crafts.  I think you can see why.

Then, on Sunday, I made another mess.  For me, starting a new collage is always the messiest part of the process.  In this case, my starting point was this small piece I did a few months ago. 

 

I wasn't satisfied with it (Where have we heard that story before?), so I wiped some of it off and re-worked it, adding some collaged papers to it as well.   I had only a vague idea what I wanted to do, so I pulled out gobs of monotype scraps, maps, ephemera, papers...

(I won't be using the dog toys in the piece- probably.)

... and began to assemble different combinations of materials that I thought might work, as I attempted to develop the concept I had in my mind's eye... trying one thing, discarding it, pulling out something else.  Often, the idea may undergo a bit of a metamorphosis as I find materials that will help me to solidify my vision...

 Right away, I found I liked this map for the lower part of the piece...

 ...so I glued these down, using a clear adhesive sheet called Grafix Double Tack Mounting Film.  I prefer this for attaching large papers to a flat surface, because there's none of the wrinkling or warping you get with liquid glues.

Eventually, I decided to add a section of a (scanned) 1957 map of the constellations, and glued this down as well.

This is how it stands so far, with the three major components glued on.  Stay tuned to find out what I do with it next...