My Brief Flash of Genius and ICAD day 3

A while ago, I talked about the coolness of packing tape transfers...they remain cool to me.  You can find a tutorial on them HERE.

I was having a lousy thoughts day and decided I needed to get some stuff out in my journal, just some mental yuck that I didn't want anybody to see in the end.  I just wanted to get some kind of cathartic release thing to happen.

Anyway, I was looking for an empty space in a journal to work out my frustrations on and came across a page where I had just written something random and stuck down an extra transfer I had done.  Then I had an epiphany.  A big "What if I..." epiphany.  

So  I grabbed some acrylic paint and squirted it over top of the page, moving it around with an old credit card.  And then I took a paper towel and swiped over the packing tape transfer that was on the page...SUCCESS!  The paint wiped right off.  Hooray!  So when the paint dried, I used a sharpie and started writing out some of what was in my brain and then stuck another packing tape transfer over that.  Then I repeated these steps (with different colors of paint) till everything was of my head and did one final layer of paint over the top of everything.

And here is the result:

The first transfer that was on the page was the bird one...I "put a bird on it".  Hehehe...Portlandia.

I really like the image of the dancers, it's so interesting to me...

I like how everything's facing a different direction, how you can see some of the words but as a whole they're still obscured, and how there's a different color paint showing through from every layer.  Thanks brain!

OK, I confess that having the words "And now all these things live in me." coming through  inside of the house image was on purpose...  I had written it and realized that it might fit and come through if I angled the house right, and boom!  It did!  I think that's a neat little extra touch.

So anyway, I just wanted to share that idea in case you wanted to do write something personal, but don't want anybody to be able to read it afterward.  Or even if you don't and just want some color from underneath to come through to the surface.  It was a flash of genius for me, so I had to show you guys, because they happen so rarely, and I kind of wanted some proof that they actually do happen...

It also happens to be day 3 of ICAD, with the theme of "faux stitching", and I did two again.  What can I say, I'm on a roll...

Here's the 3x5:

On the edges, there are fake stitches, and then I did the real stitches too.  It only took me till when I started doing the border around the word "real" to realize that if I punched some guide holes into the card first, I could probably get it to look more neatly done.  And, as a bonus, the needle would stop slipping and I'd quit accidentally stabbing myself with it.  The blood loss from needle stabs was minimal, but my finger was starting to get really sore!  See how ICAD helps?  Now I know, for future reference, to punch guide holes first!  You learn something new every day...  The extra dumb part was that I had punched guide holes in the faux stitches part in an effort to make the stitches look more real.  So it probably shouldn't have taken me so long to put two and two together concerning the real stitches...  But I got there eventually, and that's the important thing.

Here's the 4x6:

The quote says "I myself am entirely made of flaws, stitched together with good intentions."  Hooray for quotes that fit the technique!  I've really liked that quote since the first time I saw it, and have wanted to do some kind of real embroidery incorporating it, so now that's back in my mind.  I like the little faux stitched daisies at the bottom.  And the zigzag too...it reminds me of Charlie Brown.

So anyways, that's my creativity for the day.  I hope you can use the multi-layer packing tape transfer idea for something, or that it leads you to your own epiphany...and that you'll then share that epiphany with me, so's I can try out your idea!  We'll have an interchange of epiphanies!  And then we'll go get tacos...