A few months ago I was playing around with paint quite a bit and using a lot of palette paper. You’re probably familiar with it. It’s sorta waxy, so it can handle a lot of moisture.
Often, the paint dried in interesting ways, so I decided to save the papers. (Yep, I did it again: saved something I had no idea how I’d ever use.)
This week I had some down time, so I cut out the paint blobs.
See what I mean about them being interesting?
I thought maybe I could make them into a mobile. All white or with color? I decided on a mixture.
At some point I had heard that you should build a mobile from the bottom up and that was good advice. I used button twist (heavy thread) and started knotting and threading shapes on. I let the bottom shapes dangle, but I wanted the others to hang semi parallel to the floor. With that in mind I tried to puncture each piece at the center of gravity. (One of my aviation terms, simply meaning balance point.) This sometimes took more than one try.
After adding a piece, I’d make a small knot a little ways down the thread an add the next shape. I kept the colorful side facing down, since I knew it would be viewed from below. ( I did a lot of lifting to look up at my progress.)
I used short pieces of plastic straws as my cross structures, again finding the center of gravity for each one before adding it to item above.
I think it turned out pretty cool.
One thing I didn’t anticipate was the mobile moving. And that’s the best part! It’s sorta like visual wind chimes. (Only better.)
What experimenting have you tried lately?
Ellen Lindner
March Journal: Ellen, by Ellen Lindner
