Wanderlust: make it personal

Series: Wanderlust 2021 #09

The idea behind this week’s Wanderlust Ephemera lesson was to make it personal.

The most obvious way to do this is to use personal photos. I spent some time looking through family photos and pondered using either one of me as a child or one of my mum from before I was born. In the end I decided on a photo of the entrance to our family home taken in 2002, shortly after my father died and almost 20 years since I had last lived there.

The most personal part is the writing on the base layer. That was created by writing on an old book page primed with clear gesso and then tearing it into three pieces and gluing it down. I’m becoming happier with the idea of including journalling in these projects, but I still don’t want it to be legible. Though that did lead me to cover more of the background with paint than I would have otherwise done with this layout.

The third personal element is the creation of our own bits of ephemera in the form of the squares of dictionary and music paper with circular scribbles on them. Kate Crane had managed to find a combination of paper and ink that allowed her to splash water over hers and have it react with the ink; I experimented with various supplies but the paper just seemed to absorb the colour instantly, so I didn’t bother with the water in the end.

One idea that I do really like is the inclusion of a swatch of paint colours. Having chosen which colours I wanted to use, that was the first thing that was painted on the journalled background — it’s a good way of avoiding the temptation to keep adding more colours to the page. And it also creates space for some tiny doodles.

Class:

• Wanderlust 2021
• Theme: ephemera
• Teacher: Kate Crane (website, Instagram)