WIP Wednesday, holy crap it’s December already! edition. As I’ve mentioned a couple times, I’m putting together a not-advent calendar for huzbee’s and my first winter not seeing family, which I’ve been calling the December Calendar. I’m not nearly as far along with this as I’d hoped to be at this point -- even with the best of set ups, my body can only handle so much painting/gluing/cutting in a day, and if I overdo it I have to take multiple days off, and then I lose the groove, so it’s been a balancing act -- but I’m pretty happy with the progress I’ve made.
The top picture is of the backing that all the ornaments will hang on, with the first ornament (the Universe Baby Picture) already up from last night. Reconceptualizing and building the backing took most of my Thanksgiving weekend, and I only just finished painting and adorning it maybe an hour before the first ornament went up. The original idea was to glue magnets to the back of the backing or sew them in, but the rare earth magnets I’m using are way too strong -- if it rolled up or crinkled, it’d be hell to try to get it unwadded again. And weak press-and-stick type magnets on the back of the backing wouldn’t hold the ornaments up, even with the stronger rare earth magnet on the back of the ornament.
So putting something magnetic (as opposed to magnets) in the backing was the clear direction, But trying to find something that would cover ~24″x18″ (my minimum -- ended up closer to 28″x20″) for less than $70 was being a bit of a pain. Huzbee suggested steel chicken wire, and I found a roll of 1/2″ for cheap on Amazon. That finally arrived just after Thanksgiving, so I went to work unrolling it and cutting a piece to the size of the pocket I’d sewn. Eeeexcept that I couldn’t unroll i really flat, no matter what I did it warped one way or antoher, and kept the Calendar from lying flat against the wall. So on Sunday we went to Home Depot and browsed around for a solution, finally deciding on plywood pegboard, which they kindly cut to size for us. I then put the chicken wire on top of that and used lightweight string to weave in and out of the peg holes and force the chicken wire to lie flat against the board. It worked like a champ, though it does add some weight to the entire thing. Right now we have it leaned in a corner on top of a bookshelf, but if we end up hanging it at any point, we’ll want to find a stud to hang it from.
My vision for this had always included something on the backing (the Advent calendar from my Christian family’s traditions has a tree on the backing), and initially I wanted to paint a spiral galaxy right in the middle, but huzbee convinced me to simplify. As a compromise I decided on just a night sky, looking up from the Northern hemisphere in winter. I painted a big swath of Milky Way from one corner to the other, and painted in some constellations too, but once I started adding more filler stars, most of them disappeared into the background noise, lol. There’s still Orion and the Big Dipper (in rhinestones) if you know where to look. I love that there’s something to look at on the backing, but I’m not completely happy with how the Milky Way came out. I may try repainting (painting over) at some point, we’ll see. I do love the way the scattered stars and rhinestones look though.
In the lower pictures are the ornaments I’ve finished, and those I’m working on (adding glitter and gems to the Solstice one). Once I’ve finished these, I’ll be up to 24 total, just another 7 to go for a full 31 days of December. The trick now will be to get them done faster than we can put them up on the Calendar. ;)
As always, Jacquard Lumiere and Neopaque paints on black canvas, free-hand from reference pictures.