Archive for February, 2009

For a Good Cause

Tuesday, February 24th, 2009

On Etsy there is a shop (open until the end of March) where all the proceeds go to The Red Cross to help people affected by the recent fires in Australia. There are loads of wonderful items donated from some terrific and generous artists for sale, you should really go buy something:)  http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=6902734

I belong to a team on Etsy called “Metsy”, it’s a group for mixed media artist and some of us have done paper mache houses to donate to the shop. Mine is listed here:

 http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=21463566

be sure to also check out the other beautiful houses by my fellow team mates. A huge thanks to Stacey ( http://artsnark.blogspot.com/) for donating the blank houses!!

I took some pictures while I made mine and wanted to share my process.

I first painted the edges of the house with acrylic paint and cut out pages from a vintage children’s book and applied them to the house with gel medium:

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Then I took pattern paper and cut out some scallop shapes for hills, a tree and a cloud and inked the edges with a sponge:

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I then cut out a tree trunk from white core card stock and sanded it. I cut out an image of a little boy and some wings and a gold crown and glued the hill, tree trunk, tree top and fairy to the house. I also stamped a bird in the tree and music notes.

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But….. I didn’t like the stamped bird and covered it with a vintage image of a bird from an old field guide:

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The other side was a similar process of adding a hill, cloud, fairy flying a butterfly, stamped stars, etc. I also added rhinestones to the fairys clothes and Tim Holtz Distress glitter glue to all the wings. The sides of the house seemed too plain so I cut out and inked fun words like play, wish, laugh, fairy, etc and added them to the top and sides of the house:

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I really love the finished house (and I hope it sells to help out with the relief effort:))

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close ups:

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On the Wing

Monday, February 23rd, 2009

I think it’s pretty obvious I love things with wings, birds, bees, insects, fairies, etc. I’m not sure why but there’s just something about wings to me. Here’s three totally different pieces of soldered jewelry I’ve done recently but they all have wings in them:)

This first one is a fairy. On a piece of vintage French book paper I took an image of a sweet girl and added big wings to her and the word “specimen.” cut from a vintage dictionary then I hand drew her some antenna and soldered around with scalloped tape, I added a key charm to the bottom.

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This next one is a tiny bird on a wire cut from a children’s book from 1929, a page number was at the bottom so I covered it with the word “sing” and soldered around with scalloped tape.

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 This last one is another shadow box pendant. I used an image of bees and honeycomb from an old field guide and added a pewter bee charm over top and the word “queen” and layered it on yellow and black cardstock. I love the dimension on this one!

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Wish Fairy

Wednesday, February 18th, 2009

I love working on canvas board for my collages as opposed to a stretched canvas over a wooden frame because there is no “sag” in the middle and they are a little less expensive, which is always a good thing:)

For this collage I started out with a 5″x7″ canvas board and inked the edges in a brown ink. Then I tore a page out of a vintage children’s book (a story about Hansel and Gretel) and inked those edges, then using gesso I white washed the page as well and adhered it to the canvas with gel medium. I cut out an image of a mushroom and adhered it to the canvas and then cut out a scalloped border from polka dotted scrapbooking paper, inked the edges and applied it to the bottom. I cut out an image of a sitting woman, added wings to her and then adhered her on top of the mushroom. I cut out a crown and the words “My first wish is” from the same book, inked the edges and adhered them. I then sealed it all with gel medium and added two vintage buttons, that still have thread in them, to the piece with some melted beeswax.  I’m super happy with the results.

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Bzzzzzzzzzz

Sunday, February 15th, 2009

I love working with beeswax but it’s a little time consuming, a little messy and a little unpredictable but it’s fun so it’s worth it:)

 Here’s a little info on using beeswax. I use an old small crock pot for my beeswax, keep in mind you can’t ever use it for food (or anything else for that matter :)) ever again. Melting Pots work too but you’d have to clean it out I guess if you used it for anything else. I just leave the wax inside when I’m done, it cools and dries and I put it away and just plug it back in next time I’m ready to use it. Now here’s the time consuming part, it takes hours for the wax to melt again and I’m not a patient crafter so I hate waiting! I use a wooden spoon to help stir the wax (metal can get hot) and tweezers to dip with.  I lay my items on wax paper to cool. So all you do is make your item (in this case I made a collage of a fairy in a jar and cut them out) pick it up with the tweezers and VERY quickly dip it in and out of the wax, letting any excess drip back into the pot. If you leave it too long the wax will be too thick to see your art work underneath. If that does happen you can try to melt some of it and blow it out of the way with your heat tool. You can also dip a paint brush in the melted beeswax and brush it over larger objects like canvases. Then just lay it flat to dry and cool, don’t touch it while it’s wet, it drys pretty quickly.

So, I got out my beeswax pot the other day and made some really fun ATC’s (artist trading cards).  The jars are dipped, giving them the look of cloudy old glass, it’s hard to capture in a photo but they are very cool in person.

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These will be listed for sale in my Etsy shop over the next few days.

Found Object

Friday, February 13th, 2009

I just finished a little fairy collage on a tiny 3″x3″ canvas. I love working small and these little stretched wooden canvases are so fun! I first covered the canvas in two inks, one a burnt orange color, the other a brown. Then I smeared Tim Holtz crackle paint (old paper color) in some areas and heat set it all with my heat tool. I then adhered a piece of vintage tape measure down one side and then using gel medium adhered the wings and girl image. I used black Staz-On ink and stamped “Found Object 10/27/” on a small brass plaque and adhered it to the canvas too. I then ran black grosgrain ribbon around the edges of the canvas to finish it off.

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Into the Woods

Monday, February 9th, 2009

Woodland animals and themes are so hot right now and I love them! Lots of deer, mushrooms, squirrels, etc, so cute! So I’ve made some more  pendants with some woodland critter illustrations cut from that same vintage 1929 children’s book I’ve been using alot lately (poor book looks like swiss cheese now:))

Cute little squirrel in a red jacket and black pants, the back says “Mr. Bushy Tail”:

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A little fawn, this is one of my favorite!:

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Sweet little grey bunny rabbit:

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Cute brown sparrow:

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I really want to find some vintage images of some mushrooms to make some pendants with, I love mushrooms, they always remind me of Alice in Wonderland:)

Button Up

Friday, February 6th, 2009

I recently went through some stuff I had stored in my dad’s basement and found my old button jar. It’s a huge mason jar with tons of vintage buttons in it, I was so glad to find it:) I made a couple of soldered pendants with a couple of the more unusual ones.

This first one appears to be a shell button (maybe mother of pearl), the back side was pitted, dirty and had some cool green running through it. I cut the word “curiosity” from an old dictionary and added it to the button, glued it to a piece of vintage French book paper and sandwiched it between glass and using a wider tape than normal soldered around it. It makes for a very cool shadow box look I think.

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The second one also looks to be shell, it’s white with a little sparkle to it and has a beautiful embossed design in it.

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Gallery

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

I’ve just added a slide show gallery to my blog. Click on “GALLERY” under “Pages” on the right side ———->

Now you can see a bunch of my work all in one easy spot:)