Going With the Flow

We had a spectacular time at the art store picking out all the materials for our project. Sepia ink, old fashioned pens, copper ink, pink paint pens, copper and gold paint pens too, oh and a stamp that says ”Save The Date“ in a pleasing gentle script. The paper is a pale pink color and has softly deckled edges and they are accompanied by a strong dark chocolate colored envelope.

Joe and I have been working on making our Save The Date cards for a few days now. We are doing them by hand. It is turning out to be an amazing process, one of which that is more relaxing than any yoga and far more fun that going to a printer.

We dipped the paintbrush in the shimmery copper ink and then did some experiments, then we put the paintbrush in a glass of water to clean it off. What emerged was a full glass of ever so slightly sparkly copper colored water. Joe took that water and planted a nice wet confident brush stroke on the paper with it, then he handed it to me. I took the elegantly tapered pen tip and dipped it in the sepia ink and let it touch the wet portion of the paper.

For those of you who have not already had the pleasure of painting wet on wet, it is truly a liberating and amazing exercise. The brown ink touched the wet paper and then went shooting out in all directions like a fire that you wanted to keep burning, it flamed and shifted and swirled and surprised us. It is an experiment in chaos. How much can you really take letting the ink go wherever it damn well pleases.

We let them dry and the next morning there they sat on the kitchen table all lined up and pretty and each one completely different, subtly shimmery in the right light and an expression of how well Joe and I work together and how willing we are to let things flow.