I adore Emily Dickinson’s poetry. This collage was inspired by one of her most famous quotes. It’s on a 5″ x 7″ canvas board. The main images are of a bird cage and womans silhouette with a bird sitting on top of the cage. I embellished it with vintage measuring tape, a flower I made from muslin and a vintage button and a fountain pen nib.
I found these cool little metal bird cages at the craft store and thought they were fun. I turned this one into a captured fairy cage. I used a photocopy of a cute vintage girl and adhered her to chipboard and cut her out, then added some chipboard wings behind her and a rhinestone. I put faux grass in the bottom of the cage and set her inside. Pretty simple but pretty cute too 🙂
For awhile I’ve been wanting to try something I haven’t before but I’d seen other artists do it and that’s cutting a section out of a chunky canvas and making a little box or niche inside the cut out. I was so worried I’d ruin the canvas I’d been putting it off. Finally I thought, well I’ll use a small canvas and just try, so I did and I’m thrilled with the results! I traced the shape I wanted to cut out on the back of the canvas and very carefully used an exacto knife to cut it. I then collaged the front like I normally would with vintage music paper lining up my paper with the hole and cutting that out too. I added a back to the canvas to complete the “box”, to the front I added the branch, bird, scrabble tiles and a piece of vintage wooden measuring stick and then added a nest I made out of silver wire and beads inside the niche. I will definitely be trying this again.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone! We always celebrate in my family because we’ve got a lot of Irish ancestors and it’s also my brother’s birthday. When we were little we always left a piece of cake out for the leprechauns 🙂
Sadly I don’t have anything green to share but instead it’s blue. It’s a bird shrine box. I took a small wooden box with a hinged and latched lid that also has a wire screen in the front and painted it blue then used Tim Holtz’ crackle paint and distress inks to age the box. I added a tiny tag to the front door with the word “fly” cut from a vintage book. Inside I made a tiny collage from an image of a blue jay on some vintage music paper and over the door added the words “three blue eggs” also from a vintage book. My favorite part is the tiny wire nest I made and glued inside. I took a very long piece of thin blue wire and ran three blue speckled beads onto the middle and just started wrapping the wire around and around and then pushing it down around the sides of the beads to form a nest shape. It’s the first one I’ve made and I think I’ll probably be going to get lots of wire to make more:) Then finally I glued three vintage game piece to the bottom for feet.
Last year I worked on one of the most ambitious collage pieces I’ve done. This time I took some pictures during my process, which I don’t normally do since I get so caught up in working on something I don’t stop to think about it:)
I had bought a large paper mache’ bust and I want to make it into more of an old style mannequin so I went to the craft store and got an unfinished round wooden base, finial and dowel along with some black matte spray paint.
I spray painted all the wood and drilled the dowel to the base.
Then using gel medium I completely covered the bust in torn pieces of paper, scrapbook pattern paper and pages from old books. Once it was covered and dried I used gesso to white wash all the papers.
I wanted the piece to open up in the chest so I cut out a door with an exacto knife and added a metal hinge and a glass bead thumb tack for the door handle. I added vintage trim inside the door to cover were the hardware was attached. I also took a scrabble tile with a tiny collage of a girl on it and tied it with a ribbon around the neck along with some more of the trim.
I also added a vintage tape measure around the waist and big vintage button and more vintage buttons around the neck.
I then cut holes in the top and bottom of the bust and slid it over the dowel and attached the finial at the top.
Then came the hardest part. I wanted something inside of door but the inside of the bust was hollow so I made a little cardboard shelf and attached it to the inside and placed a little blue mushroom bird on the shelf. I also wanted him behind a screen so I took some tiny gold screening and glued it inside the door. I added a quote on a strip of paper and attached it to the screen with a safety pin. The quote is from singer song writer Tori Amos and it says “You’re just an empty cage girl if you kill the bird”. That quote was the whole inspiration for the piece and I think I achieved what I was going for with it.
