Coloring Inside the Lines.

Here is a quickie project (which these days means I get it done in one week) that involved my New Favorite Craft: gold leafing.

I had a print from Art Ghost which I received in a Sampler a million years ago. As soon as I got it, I knew that I wanted to color it, but it got shuffled under papers in the craft room and I didn't see it for months and months. The real issue for this blog post should be that my craft room is such a disaster I can hardly get anything done in there, but I'll try to keep it positive (!)

Here is the print before coloring. I think it's a perfect image to hang in my daughter's room but of course I needed it to be extra-special, so I used gold(en) leaf on the horn and the scales. I must say, I doubted myself for a moment as I was dabbing the sizing adhesive for the leaf on. I have gilded a bunch of our chicken eggs and didn't have any full sized leaf sheets left, just little bits and pieces that I've saved. I thought about how I was going to have to wait a while for the sizing to dry/Stella to take a nap again, how I'd have to delicately pick through little shreds of leaf to get it onto the image, and how I didn't really know how it would all turn out in the end. I haven't sprung for the real deal gold leaf yet, so maybe this fake stuff just wouldn't look right. And maybe it would prove to be too much of a pain to deal with the little shreds and it wouldn't look even and smooth in the end. I had a what-would-Martha-do moment where I mentally kicked myself for not having just gone the glitter route, but once I started the actual leafing process, it all went quickly and smoothly and I'm quite pleased with the results.

All of this serves as a reminder that: a) even though I am a grown up, it is still fun to spend time coloring, and b) buying and hoarding those disposable foam brushes whenever they go on sale is a terrible, terrible thing to do for the environment, but they are so dang handy. In this case, I used one to brush off the excess leaf and it was muy effective, and c) that ex-boyfriend I had in high school who remarked that I liked anything as long as it was shiny was right on the money (though I remember really being surprised by that revelation...I thought I was more of a muted/matte, down to Earth kind of girl). One of these days I am going to drop the dough and buy a pack of real gold leaf and then look out...I shall turn everything golden.