A while ago a friend cleaned out her craft closet and gave me lots of cool stuff to play with. One of the things she gave me was a bag of angel wings she’d removed from some old ornaments. It took awhile to figure out what I wanted to do with them but I got the crazy idea to mount a small canvas on the front and I came up with…The Queen of Flight. There’s layers of vintage paper, felt, rhinestones, book text, a vintage button and a charm dangling from the bottom too. I think she’s ready to take flight!

Here’s a couple more recent Halloween soldered charms and one not so Halloween

This first is a tiny black domino, I used white permanent ink to stamp on the dancing skeletons, this is perfect for Halloween and Dia de Los Muertos.

This soldered glass pendant is a cool vintage hanging bat stamp I found on Etsy. I stamped him on vintage dictionary paper.

This last one is sooooo spooky….NOT It’s a Queen Bee charm necklace, the large soldered domino has beehive paper and a silver bee charm, the smaller says Queen and there is also a large silver crown charm.

These are all available in my Etsy shop.

I recently got a new book at the library called “Pretty Little Felts”, the author, Julie Collings had made some amazing things using felt, including some great paper and felt ornaments. I was really inspired by them and decided to put my own twist on them and give some a try myself.

I made some tiny collages, very similar to what I’ve done in the past for other projects using vintage papers as backgrounds and adding other collage images and words on top, I then sealed the paper using gel medium, I stitched a loop of ribbon to my felt shapes and then adhered the paper collages on top. I then added embellishments like crocheted flowers and vintage buttons. I’m really happy with how they turned out

This one is a favorite theme of mine, a bird:

This one is a pretty little girl I tunred into a Queen, reminds me of the White Queen from Alice in Wonderland:

these are both on sale here in my Etsy shop  right now, look for more of these coming soon:)

Here’s a fun collage with an image of the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland that I cut from a really cool old children’s pop up book I found. She’s surrounded by roses, tiny playing cards and real scrabble tiles. The background is a vintage bingo card, I added small metal eyelets to each corner that have different playing card suits. I attached red wire to the top to hang it from.

Several years ago before I taught myself how to solder I used to make alot of jewelry with dominos, so I thought I’d try them again. Dominos are fun to work with but it’s important to remember that not all mediums will “stick” to the slick surface of a domino, some people soak them in bleach and/or sand them to give them a “tooth” to help mediums stick better but I guess I’m too lazy for that and have never found a need to do it. I try to use permanent inks and markers such as Staz-On ink pads and Sharpie markers. Chalk ink pads work well too but need to be heat set (with a heat gun) to be more permanent. Dominos are inexpensive so it’s nice to play and experiment with them to find out what works well and what doesn’t. I also like to seal mine just to make sure all my hard work will stay for a long time since it’s something that will be used and worn. A clear spray sealant works well or any type of clear dimensional liquid (like Liquid Glass, Dimensional Magic, Crystal Lacquer, etc) works nicely too, they will give a nice shiny look over your artwork. Using permanent mediums also helps when you go to seal your domino because they will not react and possibly bleed when you apply the sealant.

Here are a few pins made with Alice in Wonderland characters, I added alphabet beads along the domino edges and large pin backs on the back of each.

Also here’s a few more art cards using small bingo cards and those same fun black alphabet beads. This time I made them with Alice, the White Rabbit and Alice dressed as the Red Queen.

Here’s a pretty little collage I made this week. I got some really neat pewter crown charms and added one to an image of a sweet girl along with the word “queen”. I mounted her on paper from a vintage Italian book and black and brown cardstock. I aged a very cool metal embossed frame I had with some brown ink and mounted it all on a piece of chipboard for some stability and added a metal hanger to the back. I think it’s got a simple but very elegant look to it.

I love Alice in Wonderland, the books, the movie, the artwork, it’s one of my favorite inspirations. Awhile ago I got some stamps of Tenniel’s illustrations from Alice in Wonderland from a company that is sadly no longer in business so I’m glad I got them when I did.  Anyway I got them out the other day and made some cool Artist Trading Cards (ATC’s) with them.

All of them are 3 1/2″ x 2 1/2″ on a base of cardstock and vintage children’s book pages. The images were stamped and then colored using Prisma colored pencils and a blending solution called Gamsol (you can get it from Inky Antics: http://www.inkyantics.com/acc1.htm) you use an artists blending stump to blend and soften the color pencils, I love the look and control it gives.

The first one is the White Rabbit, holding his pocket watch. I stamped some clock images on the background page and added a real watch crystal with some real watch parts inside, they move when you shake the card

The next is Alice dressed as the Queen, wearing a gold crown and holding a golden scepter, I colored them with a gold gel pen so that they are a shiny gold. I also added some red roses (already painted red by the cards) and also a gold charm of a castle.

This last one is my favorite, I love the part of the book where Alice drinks from the bottles and grows large and then tiny. Here is Alice after she’s large looking at the bottle, it’s an actual tiny glass bottle with a cork stopper filled with tiny blue beads and glitter and I tied around a tiny tag that says “Drink Me”.