Having just finished the revamp of "Over the Summer Sea" detailed in the last post, I decided to tackle "Plate 25." It's another long, narrow collage from the same time period. For a while, I had been thinking that it needed to hang horizontally and the initial idea was to turn it on its side, and add a group of children. Not just any group, a specific group from Godey's Lady's Book that included a girl in a dress decorated with letters.
I used an image of her on a postcard and sign for the studio, and thought she'd fit nicely with the vintage report card already on the collage. But I couldn't find her. Fashion bins? No. Letter bins? No. Children's bin? No. Girls bin? No. After two days of looking, I remembered where she was ... in the "collages in progress" bin. I tucked her away there, thinking she'd be safe until I wanted to use her. But I'd forgotten that the engraving illustrated costumes, and once I saw it, I knew it wasn't what I wanted.
The search wasn't a bust, though, because during it I found a beautiful engraving from Peterson's magazine of a girl studying. It's titled "The Hard Lesson" and I discovered two copies. I almost decided to create twins. Almost. With the background removed, it appears that she's sitting at a table covered with marbled endpaper.
During all that rummaging, I came across a roll of vintage embroidered initials. Since the name on the report card begins with an "E," I decided to add them. The final touch was lightly coloring the image transfers on the left side, which were too white.
So, that's it. Well, except for the title - after all the searching, I'm thinking of changing it to "The Hard Lesson."
