spin-off
Actually, this collaborative deck has a spin-off.
Back in the beginning, before all the computer woes wiped me out for months, I had a vision of how I wanted the Nine Wands to look. Do you think I could get a sketch to approach it at all?
I was chatting in another thread to someone here, about how I was having trouble, and moaned about how I used to be able to do anything I wanted back in the days when I painted glassware.
The idea eventually sank in.
Then I was ... er ... a Computer-Free Zone, and very unhappy about it.
I knew I had some time, so I procrastinated. Then I checked on my (ancient) glasspaints, and found that they'd all dried out to unusable sludge.
So a friend of mine and I spent two days cruising around every art supply shop within a radius of about fifty kilometres (quite a few), and couldn't get any. Well, we could, but they were inferior, plasticky paints intended for children in pre-schools. I wasn't impressed.
Stumbled, in the process, into a cheap-shop, where I found delightful smaller-sized corked glass bottles. Perfect, I thought. I'll do it on a bottle, not a wineglass. And bought one.
After a lot of searching, my brain kicked into delayed gear again (as it had with deciding what I was going to paint on!), and I went to eBay.
Of course they had the kinds of glasspaints I wanted, of the quality I wanted. For money. And with a delivery-delay.
Then the April storm happened, from which I'm still recovering, and from which the nearby lake will take years to recover, and I was wiped out for a week, with no warmth, no power, no food, no lights.
Ordered my ebay glasspaints. By now, the outliner-stuff that makes it look vaguely like leadlighting (necessary, in my opinion) was no longer available. Messaged the supplier, she said she'd get some in for me. Waited another week.
By now I was out of time. Argh!
Outliner arrived. Frantically painted. I was happy with how it turned out - ish. I was also amazed how with a mere fifteen years or so since I last did it, my hands seemed to have forgotten the techniques and I really had to concentrate. What's the go there? Surely if you can do something, you can do something.
Then I lost my camera.
And bought some more of the bottles, they were just a good size (and I had all these paints I didn't want to waste).
Then NisabasAcolyte photographed it in a cafe with inquisitive staff, and we had all the trouble with sizing, getting it from him to me to Reall.
By now, I thought there are other Tarot cards I'd like to do. I had, by now, bought around fifteen of the bottles, and asked the manager of the shop to order me in enough to make up an entire Tarot deck, with a few spares.
I decided to stick with the Wands pip cards, since I started there, and in a few nights had done the Ten, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two and Ace. The Ten came out looking the best even though it was only the second card I did - I'm delighted with it, closely followed by a very attractive Ace. By now I was getting my hand back in.
The cold weather started up, and I had a few crochet projects I wanted to do, so I put it aside to pick up again when I've finished what I wanted to crochet and/or it becomes to warm and sweaty to be able to do it, and I anticipate using the warm/hot months of the next seasons to complete the deck. I might even re-do the Nine now that my hand is back in, keeping the original one as a physical memento of the collaborative deck.
What am I going to do with seventy-eight glass bottles? Well, singing a song about glass bottles and walls springs to mind <grin>. I'll scatter them over every shelf, table, and surface. The top of the fridge, the top of the microwave, any free space on Altars, bookshelves, etc.
I just lo-o-ove the idea of having Tarot-bottles everywhere, seventy-eight of them, and this collaborative deck is wholly responsible for that deck-of-bottles, as well as for getting me back into glasspainting, something I used to be really good at.
I'm so happy about all of this.
