On December 30th, I hung four bundles of papers, dolls, doodads, metal pieces, and fabric out in the yard for the Erosion Bundle Project. All four began their journey by hanging out in the tree in the back yard. After the rain, one of the bundles became to heavy from the water and fell out of the tree so I left it lying in the jasmine for the rest of its journey.
April came and it was time to unwrap the bundles. There was no change to the papers except for being a little crisp and moldy. All of the items in the middle of the bundles had no change at all which was very disappointing.
The few changes that happened were a couple of mint tins that rusted nicely, a bunch of papers that appear to be handmade dress patterns which turned transluscent, and the doll with the pink pipe cleaner dress. The wire rusted and turned the pink to rust. Very cool. She looks like Glenda the Good Witch from the Wizard of Oz on a bad or maybe good day. The other doll just looks disheveled.
Lessons learned: 1) do not wrap the bundles tightly because the elements can't make its way into the center to erode and 2) do not leave the bundles in the plants because the Glenda bundle was filled with live pincher bugs. Ugh....I hate bugs!
I still have one bundle hanging on the pool fence. It has been sitting out since June 2009 and I'm going to leave it out for a year. We'll see what treasures we'll find in a few months.
Here are some before and after pictures.
December 2009
February 2010
May 2010
Your Glenda doll looks VERY cool!!
You really had a lot of stuff out there! Well, get busy and make some art with all that great stuff.
Posted by: Kris | May 04, 2010 at 07:10 PM
The doll is my favorite.
Posted by: Joanne Thieme Huffman | May 04, 2010 at 07:32 PM
Thanks for sharing. I wanted to do this but had nowhere to put them in an apartment. I will try next year and take your advice on how to bundle and where to place them... Placing metal inside them is a good idea you think?
Posted by: Karan Simoni | May 05, 2010 at 09:25 AM
Very cool, Vicki! My bundle didn't change much either. I'm very interested to see what happens to the bundle you leave out for the full year.
Posted by: Karen Owen | June 24, 2010 at 03:11 PM