like white on rice

The Kollage Kit's theme for the week was "Illustrate an idiom." The other night "like white on rice" just popped into my head. I've been wanting for some time to make an all-white collage, so this was a great excuse!

Game for the viewer: Find 13 white buttons, 3 white flowers, 2 white books, and one partial picture of a white statue.

F.A.Q.:

What are the white things in this collage? An incomplete list: white ice, white snow, white water, white fur, white feathers, white skin, white fabric, white trees, white flowers, white painted wood, white buildings, white ceramic, white plastic, white stone, white sand, white glass, white paper, white makeup, white diamonds, and white hair (the hair of Lady Gaga, Andy Warhol, and Leo Tolstoy, among others.)

How many individual pieces are there? 186. Seriously! I kept a tally as I glued them down.

How did you keep your energy up through the long hours of making this collage? Black coffee, black licorice jelly beans, and a tall stack of Talking Heads CDs.

What was the hardest part of making this collage? My black cat decided I had been spending too long at my table and too little time with her, so she jumped up into my work space...right at the gluing stage. She walked on all the collage materials and rubbed herself all over my hands and the front of my T-shirt. The hard part was avoiding getting her black hairs stuck with glue onto the collage itself. I know I didn't entirely succeed.

Have you ever used "like white on rice" in speech or in writing? No, I've just read it in books. Sample sentence: "He was stuck on that girl like white on rice."

If this is an all-white collage, how come it isn't, like, all white? All right, that's enough questions.