Random Act of Kindness

Random Act of Kindness are known in the art trade as RAKs and they can mean all kinds of things such as sending someone a piece of mail art or an Artist Trading Card out of the blue, but of course it can also mean lots of other things such as paying for someone's groceries when they have left their purse at home, feeding someone's cat when they are away from home and I'm sure you can come up with many other ideas as can I. I try and practise them as much as I can but I mainly do so anonymously. They put a smile as much on my face as on that of the recipient but I don't like talking about it. The challenge for The Documented Life Project this week (no. 19) is to : Document a random act of kindness (by you). I'm deviating a bit as I'm documenting such an act by someone else i.e. my mother.

Out of the blue I received a big box coming from my mother in The Netherlands. In it there were two table carpets. I have long hankered after one. If you are familiar with the paintings of the 17th Century Dutch artists such as Frans Hals and Rembrandt you may have seen them.  Here is a good example. They literally are thick carpets that are meant to go on a table rather than the floor. I can remember my grandparents having one. And I've always wanted one. My mother managed to lay her hands on not just one but two and one is now adorning our dining room table while the other decorates the top of the settee. You can see it on the table in the picture above and for interest I've put my planner on top. The picture was taken with my Polaroid camera and I used that to add a border to it.

I stitched the picture to a gelli plate printed background to which I had added rubber stamping in the shape of a chandelier and decorative chairs, to create a dining room atmosphere. I coloured the stamps in with watercolour markers. I also used white and black pens to outline.