Archive for January, 2010

Cut it Out!

Sunday, January 24th, 2010

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.

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The Solder’s been Flowin’

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

I recently found a couple more gorgeous vintage children’s books, one was in pretty bad shape and that makes it easier to cut it up:) They both have some wonderful illustrations that I’m turning into soldered pendants. Here’s a few I’ve made so far.

This first one I really love, the white cow is so sweet but mostly because I feel so clever with what I put on the back side:
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This next one is a sweet Momma Cat and her kittens:
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A birds nest and bird flying away (love this one!):
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and this one is a child riding a horse under a full moon, really neat:
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All these pendants are currently for sale here in my Etsy shop. And I’ll be adding even more in the next few days.

Button Up My Heart

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

So, I love old buttons and have used some in soldered jewelry but was wanting to making something “more” with them. I remembered a piece I saw awhile ago from the great Rebbecca Sower and also some pieces I’ve seen on Etsy and I was inspired to make this piece. I had some extra burlap from another project and loads of vintage white buttons so I drew a heart onto the burlap and stitched on all the buttons filling in the heart. And since I love adding little cut out words to just about everything I added the word “love” to one of the buttons. I bought an embroidery hoop and stained it with some wood stain (I have some vintage hoops packed away some place from my cross stitch days and need to find them, they’d be great in a piece like this) and then I put the burlap in the hoop, trimmed it down and glued it to the back. I think it turned out really lovely.

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Happy New Year and Happy to Be Published Again

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

Hope everyone is enjoying a happy new year so far!

I was thrilled to have some pages from my French altered book be published in the Fall ’09 issue of Altered Arts magazine (click here to see my post about it) and now they’ve published 6 more pages from the book in the current issue of their e-magazine (issue 19) and even more will be in issue 20. Click here to visit their website, down loadable e-magazines are only $2.99 or free with any purchase.