This is an experiment I did this afternoon. One of my favorite things to do is to paint papers that might otherwise be thrown into the landfill and then do creative things with them, such as lettering on them. This is a bulletin insert from church, necessary because our old hymnal did not have "Rock of Ages" in it. What a travesty, you may say -- although I actually don't like this hymn. It can get slow and mournful and is just not uplifting to me personally. (If this is YOUR favorite hymn, then you'll be happy to know our new hymnal does have it -- so the error was corrected!)
So -- I painted on this paper some while back with some ordinary acrylic paint, and then set it aside for some time.
It caught my eye today, and I wanted to letter something on it. The "music" was done with a black Flair pen, and the rest of it was done with a black Sharpie. I found it interesting that neither one of these pens played particularly nice with the paint. I wonder if there's some kind of chemical reaction? I know Sharpies contain alcohol-based ink. Not sure about Flairs, but I would suspect they have the same. Anyway, this is not great art -- I was just fooling around, after all -- but I thought it turned out kind of interesting, so here it is!
Recently I have been sticking my toe.... or maybe pen.... back into the writing by hand waters. I started slow, with some mail to some long-neglected pen friends, who, although I was not writing to them, were ALWAYS ON MY MIND.
OK, well maybe not like that.....
Anyway, another toe-dipping venture is Postcrossing, and if you are not familiar with this website, you need to be. So I have been sending out postcards, and my "local color" cards have been running low. I do not live in a tourist mecca, by any stretch of the imagination, so getting postcards here is difficult. Whenever I make a short jaunt out of town, to the coast or New Orleans, I like to look around for postcards to stock my stash.
Today I went to the Mississippi Gulf Coast for a Saturday outing, and wandered all over -- Bay St. Louis, Pass Christian, Waveland, Gulfport, and Biloxi. Much of the wandering was done on Highway 90, which travels right along the beach for miles and miles. It's not the prettiest beach of course, because 1) it's entirely manmade (although it is supposedly the longest manmade beach in the entire world); and 2) it doesn't access the Gulf of Mexico directly -- the beaches in Gulfport and Biloxi face the Mississippi Sound -- so this means our beaches don't get what they call "ocean dynamics." I think this translates into: we don't get nice waves and the beaches can get kind of trashy with debris. BUT! It's a BEACH. I love to look at the water.
Satellite view of the sound, with the Mississippi barrier islands
A view of the beach/hotels/casinos
Long story long -- when I am on the beach I generally like to hit one of the souvenir shops there. There are not that many down there, but they are pretty sizeable. And there's one -- Sharkheads -- that has lots and lots of postcards. I came home with a few:
OK, this is more than a few -- it's a pile of 72 cards, to be exact.
I think I am stocked up now and ready for some more Postcrossing. If you want one of these, leave a comment and I'll send you one too!
