Old School

Happy New Year. I hope that you all had a wonderful Christmas. I just cannot believe that the holidays are over.

The Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge theme this week is ‘Embrace The Old.’ I have never joined in a challenge before so I thought that I would give this a try. As my son goes back to school this week I thought that I would base my artwork on education. This collage does hold sentimental value. The large image is of my husband’s great grandmother, a very beautiful lady whilst the image of the children is from a section of a ninety year old original whole school photograph of the school that my daughter attended. When my daughter was a pupil there it was a girl’s convent school. I bought this in a boot fair a few years ago. I think I paid £2 for it and I love it, I just couldn’t bring myself to use the original photo so I scanned this portion. The colour image of the little boy is from a Janet and John book that I bought on Ebay. I remember reading this series of books at school when I was six.

To create this collage I stuck the page from an old encyclopaedia, the image of the children and the old school report onto the canvas board with Claudine Hellmuth’s matt medium. I then sealed this by applying a coat of matt medium over the whole canvas. When dry I used a blending tool to apply antique linen and frayed burlap distress inks. I transferred the image of my husband’s great grandmother onto the canvas. I think that she has the look of a schoolteacher. I then added the old postage stamp (also a purchase from ebay), words, letters, numbers and the Janet and John little boy. The stamped ‘abc ‘ is from Graphic 45.

Your comments are always greatly appreciated.

Lina x