This project was inspired by a vastly over-priced piece of bicycle kitsch I saw at a neighborhood shop. The piece was basically a large square board with beveled edges to which a low-quality printout of a diagram of a high-wheeled bicycle had been pasted and glazed over. "Hell, we can do that," I said to my wife. So we did, sort of.
We found four small wooden tiles at a local thrift shop, printed out some photos from the 1890s and early 1900s I found online, and glazed them onto the tiles with an acrylic matte medium. I used a bit too much medium, which produced some small wrinkles, and the hues I added digitally before printing streaked a bit when I brushed on the medium, but I actually like the effect it produced.
The whole project cost maybe $3.00 ($2.00 for the tiles, maybe a dollar's worth of paper, ink, and medium).
