Gluing 2014

Counter clockwise from left to right:
1.  Image, which is finished, and has been adjusted and changed and fine tuned until it is as close to perfect as I can get.  It's all temporarily adhered onto the painted surface with yellow sticky stuff so that I can look at it for a long long time before I glue it.   This is part seeing how it wears over time and part procrastination.

2.  Scissors:  Good ones, in this case Dahle http://www.amazon.com/DAHLE-Super-Shears-All-around/dp/B001V21CQ2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1397427200&sr=8-1&keywords=dahle+scissors  (shouldn't I be getting a kickback from Dahle on this?).  I have about twenty pair of scissors.  The Dahles are pretty much the only ones I use, and I've had them for at least 25 years.  I use my other scissors if I'm doing coarse cutting of plastic or paper that I don't care about.  The scissors, at this stage, are to trim and refine as I glue.  I always keep the bits and pieces of what I cut off in case I've cut off too much and need to correct.

3.  A fine brush to paint in problem areas in the painted surface or the photo that I see after I've glued everything down.

4.  A white pencil to mark the areas of the image that need to be trimmed.

5.  A magnifying glass to make sure my glue edges are good.  Older eyes(even with glasses) aren't serving me as well as they used to.

6.  Foam brushes to coat the backs of the paper that I will be adhering.  Different sizes brushes for the different sizes of paper that will lay down.  I always want to make sure I go over the edges of the paper I'm about to glue, but I also don't want to waste the adhesive.  Bowl of water so that I can drop the not being used foam brushes in so that the adhesive won't dry.

7.  Spray bottle of water to spray the front surface of thinner papers like dictionary pages, tissue, or newsprint so that they won't curl into a nasty ball when I put the adhesive on the back.

8.  Little ball of yellow sticky stuff that I use to adhere the paper onto the panel temporarily and which I also use to register where the paper will go on the panel just before I drop it down.

9.  Polymer medium, in this case Dick Blick, but all the brands work pretty well.  I buy it by the gallon and it lasts about two years.

What I'm not showing is the back knobber which I use to try and push out the large, uncomfortable  knots  that I get in my back from standing and maneuvering badly behaved pieces of paper.  I'm also not showing the EKG display which records the wild and erratic rhythms of my heart as I realize that I have glued something at the wrong angle, backwards or upside down, or when, as I smooth the paper down with a discarded credit card(not shown), all of the ink pulls up, so that I'm left with a blobbed smear of paper.  And lastly, I'm not showing xrays of my locked jaw and frozen neck, concretized from my standing rigidly for hours at a time trying to force all those big and little pieces of paper to bend to my will.