Let It Be: Part of a Process

I had grand plans for this post. I had all sorts of things I had been considering saying about what has turned out to be a favourite page:

I was going to tell you all about the photo, which is the one I thought of instantly when Get It Scrapped asked for Ideas For Revealing Setting With Colour, Shape and Texture. It was taken in Prague, by a clever friend of the girl who posed perfectly against the graffitti of the John Lennon Wall.

I was going to tell you how I decided to try to recreate something of the look of that wall on my page

and how I began by laying down a layer of gesso and then blending gelatos in the colours I picked from the picture. And how I stamped in black, then, with any little phrases I could find which might echo the words of the Beatles songs we all know

And then I was going to tell you about the flowers and butterflies I hand cut from artwork by Wilna Furstenberg. I always have a few of these sitting on my desk, because I enjoy the cutting out and, of course, the end result.

And how when I started to lay everything out I discovered I was going to have to cover up quite a lot of my background, but that I decided to take a deep breath and go with it rather than re-design. Because, after all, the story of this wall is one of covering and re-covering, paint over paint, layer upon layer. So that would be just right.

And then I thought I'd mention the title, which took three or four tries before I got something I liked. I pulled out several alphabets and they all took attention away from the photo, so in the end, I smeared a little black ink over some white letters, just so you could make them out among everything else. The Lennon song title leads into the journaling, about the wall being painted over at one point in its history.

But, much as I love what I ended up with, I'm not in a hugely talkative frame of mind just at the minute, so I'll just leave you with the pictures..