Sunday, March 8, 2015

My Other Creations: Blackout Poem Tribute

This week's theme at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog is, "B is for...."  When I started thinking about B things, the possibilities were endless!  You don't even know how close I came to trying to art-i-fy a piece of bread!  But in the end, I went with a project I'd been excited about for quite a while: my own version of a Blackout Poem.


What, you may ask, is a Blackout Poem?  We have the highly clever Austin Kleon to thank for that.  He's a writer/artist who had the inspired idea to go through a stack of newspapers with a black Sharpie and scribble out most of the words leaving only a few behind that formed a "poem."  As a lit nerd myself, I found this idea intriguing.  We crafty folks often add words to collages, but relying on the words that are already there and creating art around it?  I wanted to give it a whirl.  

I started by ripping out a page from a discarded book (and don't think my librarian side didn't cringe doing it).  I took a good look at the words.  We're used to reading words in the order in which they're intended, so it was a different sort of phenomenon to look at all the words independently and try to figure out a new way to connect them.  I eventually came up with, "You can generate geek magic."  I penciled around the words that I chosen, then got out the Gesso and painted out everything but those five words.


When it dried, I masked off the words using Post-it notes and reached for my acrylic paint.


I painted some streaks and smears down the page, covering everything in blue, green and yellow.


Next I did some stenciling and stamping and threw on a circular frame that I cut from some vintage dictionary paper. 


I added more stamping, some yarn and some fabric scraps, too.  And the best part of this project?  That moment when you pull off the Post-it note masks and see your poem showing through!


I thoroughly enjoyed this project and will never look at words on a page the same way again.  The only hard part was the pressure!  Usually if you mess up on an art project, you can scrap it and start from scratch.  But I had ONE unique book page with ONE unique set of words.  I know we say, "embrace mistakes," but let's face it: where else would I find another set of words that spelled, "You can generate geek magic"?  I couldn't mess up my one shot, so I'm glad this project had a happy ending. 

Thanks again to Austin Kleon, whose idea I absolutely love and absolutely stole.  But he also wrote one of my favorite creative books called, Steal Like an Artist, so I think he'll be okay with my respectfully-intended thievery.

I made this project with these fabulous supplies, which you can get at Simon Says Stamp.



 
And what will B your inspiration for our letter B challenge? (see what I did there?)  Upload your masterpieces to the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog so we can be inspired together and so that you'll be entered in the drawing for the $50 Simon Says Stamp store voucher.  That would B a sweet prize!

http://www.simonsaysstamp.com/