With the Unicorn painting finished, and listed on both Etsy and Artfire (and Twittered!), time for my latest functional art project. Small, hand held size hiking or trail riding journals. These journals will be embellished with natural stones or silver on the leather lacing and then a miniature painting on the cover. I think these will be very unique.
My theme is wildlife and landscapes of the southwest. I plan on using stones that are natural to the landscape depicted for the journal decoration. For example, one journal cover will feature the feral mustangs of Nevada, and I will be using natural (as possible) Nevada mined turquoise and silver beads. Reason being, Nevada is well known for it's illustrious turquoise mines and of course the abundant silver mines. I will also make two additional journals, plans are for an Elk looking over the Grand Canyon (copper and silver beads) and a Buffalo (bison) in Yellowstone (still deciding on stones; need to do some more research).
So I have the theme selected, still need to get more reference material together for the miniature paintings. I have cut all the paper out and am ready to start binding the journals. I'm thinking I will bind and bead each journal first, and then get started on each matching painting. My time is now directed on this new project; I'm excited to see how these will turn out in time! I'll keep on with updates every week!
