Caught on Film

Only one week left to do Christmas baking and writing out cards(!), and I find myself obsessed with experimenting with this 8mm film I found in my basement.

Inspiration rarely happens conveniently.

Today I decided that weaving it was the thing to do.

I did it on a clipboard to hold the ends in place and the board was also a nice portable work surface.
I added some sheet music for variety and as it happened, stumbled on some lyrics
that suggested a theme.

Done with the weaving, I taped the loose ends on three sides and slipped the piece off the clipboard.

The whole time I worked on the weaving part, I'm thinking,

"what next?"

I made this up as I went along and did not completely rule out the possibilty of trashing it in the end. A waste of time perhaps, that would have been better spent on Christmas preparations.

But I trudged on.

Fast foreward past stitching down the film weaving (stablizing it), rummaging for an appropriate photo, deciding on other assemblage bits and sewing them down too, on the sewing machine and by hand...

...And you have my mostly finished piece.

An homage to some of events and memories caught on film. First child, a beautiful spring day (or is it summer?), and maternal pride.

The photo is an original, already colorized, that I bought in a lot on etsy.

I chose to add metal snaps instead of buttons, because they resemble film reels.

Also a lot of baby clothes has snaps for ease of dressing and undressing.

I was tempted to hot glue the snaps on, but was too lazy to take out my glue gun and wait for it to heat up.

Needle and thread were quicker to find, although I was wishing for a thimble at times.
(Not easy pushing through layers of plastic film.)

So, another use for the film I am selling in my etsy shop. :)

I haven't forgotten my promise to show you my 8mm film brooch idea, I just haven't wrestled one into being yet!