More yumminess ...

Having more yummy fun related to the birthday/anniversary celebration of Cincinnati's BonBonerie Bakery. A birthday exhibit opens 8-11 p.m. Friday (April 12) in the bakery's cafe.

I created a trio of cakes for the show. The first two are purely decorative, a departure for me. But as I said in a Facebook post, there are times when you have to give into your inner sugar. The third one, has a story behind it. 

All are on Ampersand's cradled Claybord panels, which have a hardwood base. The wood sides are coated with clear varnish to allow the wood to show. I like that look. Since they'll hang as is - no protective framing - each is sealed with multiple layers of Mod Podge's Hard Coat (which is less sticky when it dries than some other sealers).

The wedding cake - made up of layers of Victorian needlework illustrations - also has piles of Victorian scraps in wonderfully muted colors. Most were a gift from my friend Shirley Tenhover, who I'm sure will appreciate how they have been used. She is, after all, a former cooking teacher and restaurant consultant. 

© Classic 14 Layer Marble Cake

$175

Mixed-media collage by Sara Pearce: original antique trade card and
color charts  (Textbook of Art Education: Book 6, Prang, 1904); vintage
 blueprint  (King Machine Tool Co., 1947); recycled hand- and machine-printed
marbled paper; fluid chalk, acrylic paint, ink; acrylic sealer & varnish; 
hardwood panel. 12" x 12" x 1" (2013)

© Love's Offering

$175

Mixed-media collage by Sara Pearce: original antique embroidery 
engravings (Godey's Lady's Book, Feb. 1858,  April 1859, March 1860, 
Jan. 1864,  Feb. 1865; Peterson's, Jan. 1862, July, 1868, April 1870, 
Nov. 1873, April 1880;  Delineator, April 1891)  and scraps; 
recycled wrapping paper; image transfers;  fluid chalk, acrylic paint,

 ink; acrylic sealer & varnish; hardwood panel. 12" x 12" x 1"  (2013)

The Beginning of the End:

Eve Offers Adam a Piece of Fruitcake

$175

Mixed-media collage by Sara Pearce: original vintage prints and scraps 
(Treasures of Venice, 1963;  Great Prints and Printmakers, 1967); 
recycled wrapping papers;  fluid chalk, marker, ink; acrylic sealer & 
varnish; hardwood panel. 12" x 12" x 1"  (2013)

Delicious fun

A few months ago, I was asked by Sharon Butler, a local bakery owner, to create a postcard for the bakery's 30th anniversary. The Bonbonerie is not just any Cincinnati bakery. It is one of the best. In fact, it was just won the top spot for best bakery, best dessert and best wedding cake in Cincinnati CityBeat's annual "Best of ..." issue.

In addition to its wonderful basked goods, the bakery, cafe, and tea room are infused with a sense of whimsy. Colorful art. Fun collections of cake stands, tea pots, and more. Mismatched furniture. It's cozy, yet hip.

Sharon wanted the postcard to show two girls. "Tiny bakers" is what she called them. After scouring my archive, I turned up the wonderful photo above ... and went to town. I could have made physical collages, but there were digital techniques I wanted to try. And I had to create more than one card, to give them a choice, which meant duplicating the original photo.

Well, I got carried away. To say the least. I ended up developing a series of 4 postcards.

Each card featured the girls from the antique photo. But Sharon thought they looked like sisters, which she and her co-owner Mary Pat Pace are not. She hit on the idea of subbing the heads with childhood pictures of her and Mary Pat. We ran into immediate problems. The first photos - 1950s era snapshots - were too blurry. The second photos - school pictures - were better. But in Sharon's photo, she was too old (5th grade).  After much tweaking, Sharon's photo (she's on the left) was in printable shape.    

I pulled images from my archive to add to the cards. And experimented with various filters and layering styles in Photoshop. For example, on the cakes behind them, above, I used color overlays, gradient overlays and pattern overlays. I hadn't used any of these in a long time and it gave me a much clearer understanding of how a lot of the digital collage work I've been seeing is accomplished, especially greeting cards.

I also played with type, learning how to manipulate it and add drop-shadow effects - though I still have a long way to go. And I messed around with the various ways to transform images in order to make them the desired shape. The party hats and horns, for example, were resized and skewed.  

For the final postcard, I dropped out the original background and substituted the pattern from the bakery's box - which I had scanned - for it. It became vivid wallpaper. I had also scanned the bakery business card and took the logo to make a "sign" on the wall, as well as pins on the girls' dresses. Then, I slipped the card into Sharon's hand. Later, she requested that I turn the card into an invitation. So, I went back in and erased the original type, substituting the text she wanted.

In addition to becoming a postcard, the final design was made into a poster in a few different sizes. This one is at the entrance to the bakery, with others hanging inside, as well as in the cafe. Kinda fun to walk up and see my work!  

Costume drama, and mystery

Wish I could tell you where these spectacular women are from, but I haven't a clue. They're part of the humungous new stash and were in a pile of pages that had been a book about costumes. But, no title page. No engraver listed on the pages. No publisher either. If you have spotted these some place else, please, please, please let me know.

Each is hand-painted and a fairly sizable 9" x12" or so. My first thought was to have them floating. Now, I am thinking they'd be swell cake toppers. I have an exhibit coming up in February at Cincinnati's Bonbonerie bakery's cafe and had been thinking about a new collage take on cakes anyway - and calling the exhibit, wait for it, yes, Let Them Eat Cake ...  

Well, if you REALLY need an excuse to visit The Bonbonerie ...

... I'm here to offer one: Paper With A Past is participating in the Cincinnati bakery's Annual Holiday Art Show 11 a.m. - 4 p.m. Saturday. Yes, this Saturday, Dec. 3. There will be 14 artists in the space between the bakery and the cafe.

My daughter, Laura, will be there selling wreaths (three sizes, $15, $18 & $22) and ornaments (3 sizes, $5 each) from our new Punch Drunk line, above. They're made from recycled greeting cards, file folders, gift bags and anything else in my stash that I'm not using in collages. She'll also have holiday collage gift tags ($5 each), some of the new collage ornaments ($18 each) and the last of the postcard ornaments I've been making for the past seven years ($4 and $6 each).

Me? Well, as promised, I'll have my studio at Brazee open 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Then, I'll zip over to O'Bryonville, providing my own excuse for checking out the baked goods.

Click here for more details on the sale, and the bakery.

Food for thought

I've been working on a series of collages for an upcoming exhibit at The Bonbonerie Cafe - no date yet - that are based on people's food memories. I thought I'd give a sneak preview of two of the pieces in progress. I plan to finish these and the remaining three this week, now that I've wrapped up 90 new collage tags - including a batch of Halloween ones you'll see soon.

I read, and re-read, pages and pages of memories that were collected during a series of dinners last winter and spring at a large, communal table in The Bonbonerie's former tea room. Each meal had a theme and during the dinners, people shared their stories of the role that food's played in their lives. I found myself attracted to far too many of the stories and overwhelmed as I began to gathering paper for them. So, I winnowed it down to five stories that resonated the most with me.

The collages shown here - which I haven't titled yet - are about a first-time lobster experience on a date in Miami and a grandfather who owned a cafe in Northern Kentucky and, for a time, sold sausages from his bicycle. I loved that image and was lucky enough to find a large-scale bicyclist in my stash, along with some beautiful sausages. The gummed price labels were a fab find tucked inside a box of cardboard price tags I bought two years ago on a trip to New Harmony, Ind. I was looking for a tag and had forgotten the labels were there. That's one of the things I love about what I do: constant surprises!

I'll let you know when the exhibit opens.

Tag sale!

Well, this week I delivered 90 - yes, 90 - of the Fit To Be Tied® collage tags/bookmarks/whatever to my first retail clients: The Bonbonerie in O'Bryonville and NVISION in Northside. Next: Redtree in Oakley. The orders just about wiped out my inventory, so I whipped up a slew of new tags yesterday and will be working on more next week. Now, if only the Studio Fairy would show up and help me seal, stamp, bag and tag 'em!

Oh, the reason you don't see the hole in most of these is because I am scanning them in before I punch it and add the hand-painted reinforcements. Yeah, another task the Studio Fairy could complete with a swipe of her magic wand.