Bead Journal Project - Finishing Solution Found!

I watched a friend, Sondra Bayley, artist/photographer, handle my BJP "soul cards," gingerly trying to pick them up without rumpling the edges. I could tell she was concerned that her hands might not be perfectly clean, that she might get finger prints on them... She was clearly uncomfortable and so was I, not that I was worried about my pieces but that it cut into her enjoyment of them.

She asked how I intended to display them. Display them? Well, cards don't display very well... either they sit out on a table flat, and you can't see the backs... or... or what? She then spoke very strongly in favor of them as "art" and as such, she said, I needed to figure out a way to show them. She suggested framing each one separately.

Yes, I thought, you're right. But how? And what about the painted backs? So I took them to my studio and started playing around with grouping them. Three groups of four, but not in chronological order, looked good to me. Now what?

Traditional framing wouldn't work. I couldn't put a mat over my pieces because of the beaded picot edges. They would have to be glued to something. What? Not just plain old mat board...

Well, I love to paint decorative papers. And it was great fun to paint the papers I used for the backs of the cards. So why not try to paint papers as a background for each group of four?

That's what I did. And happy it makes me... happy painting and happy with how my pieces look on the painted papers. Whooohoooo! Now, what about the backs of the cards? No way to save them. I'd have to sand off the wax finish and some of the paint in order to glue them to the papers. But what I COULD do is to scan and print them. Yes, and glue the prints to the backing in the frame.

Voila! Here they are. You won't be able to see the painted papers very well unless you click the pictures to enlarge them. Hope you like them...

front and back, group 1

front and back, group 2

front and back, group 3

The groupings are by intuition, not logic. I just like them that way. There you have it! Finis!

By the way, I never, ever in the whole world thought I'd be framing something I'd painted. Never! (I guess we should never say "never," eh?) I only started painting a few years ago when I took a hand made book class and a painting class at ArtFest.

I was like a child... didn't know the first thing about paint, acrylics, brushes or any of it. Words like glaze and pounce were a mystery to me when applied to painting. But at the same time, I was like a child in Disneyland. And, though I was lost in the techniques department, I had a blast in the get-paint-on-the-paper department. Enough of the techniques stuck that I kept on working with it.

Several years later and you do not want to know how much painting stuff I've got crammed into my studio... or how MUCH I love it!