Ned the Nuisance

Have you heard about The Whatevers?  A cool project has been started by Catherine Scanlon, Nathalie Kalbach and Vicki Chrisman that takes a photo each month and gives it a story.  I have many such "found/bought" ancestors in my own collection and always wonder about who they were and what was the story behind the photograph.  In this year long project you can play along and give these photos their very own story.  Here's what I did using my canvas portfolio journal with manila file folder pages (you can see my handmade journal on my blog post HERE).

On the left side I placed the photograph and added four sentences found in an old book that embellished their story a bit. The four sentences read: Let's sit down and I'll try to be sensible. I'm eight now - and I won't be a nuisance. They sat down together on the seat. It was a charming picture.

I love finding book text snippets and combining them into their own story.

And here's my story:
Caroline had set aside every bit of extra money she could spare in order to get a photograph of her children.  Now the day had arrived and her daughter Elizabeth was all ready, but where in the world was Ned?  Off playing in the field behind the house, he came running hearing his mother yelling his name vaguely remembering there was something he was supposed to do today... Finally at the photographer's studio, Elizabeth sat on the bench all prim and proper with her ankles crossed while Ned was placed reluctantly beside her.  Caroline wet her thumb and smoothed his hair just before the photographer snapped the picture.

I had initially planned to make this journal a collage journal, kind of vintage glue-book style as I've done before, and my initial layer was a collage of vintage book pages from a math book and a speller.  As I stared at the page though, I have to confess that it was kind of boring and I just couldn't stop myself as out came the acrylic paints (Light Blue Permanent, Bright Yellow Green, and Quinacridone Red) and I finger-painted washes of watered down paint randomly.  Then I added stamping with black archival ink and white gesso, along with some pen doodles.  Ahhhhh - so much more interesting :-)  So Catherine and Nathalie, I really have to blame you/thank you for turning me on to all this wonderful color and mixed media layers in the various online classes I've taken from you both!!!  This is going to be such a fun mixed media journal when I'm done with it and I'm so looking forward to next month's installment of the Whatevers.  By the way, the manila file folder pages in this journal are awesome to work with ;-)