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 🙂
I’m sorry it’s been so long since my last post. The year has hardly begun and already it’s been rough. I’ve had alot of health issues and almost two weeks ago I unexpectedly lost my Grandfather (which has been terribly hard for the whole family).
But I’ve been trying to keep busy, mostly by redoing my work space. I’m almost done, it looks so great and functions so much better than before, I feel so organized! I’ll post before and after pics soon.
In the meantime here’s a few collages I’ve made recently with the thought of Valentine’s Day and love. I took white chipboard and cut out a heart shape (aprox. 5 1/2″ square) and adhered some vintage music sheet and patterned papers that I’d whitewashed and “sponged” with painted bubble wrap. I then added German paper scrap birds, vintage text, ribbons, sewed on buttons, etc. I punched holes at the top and added eyelets and wrapped cream wire for hangers. I think they turned out really pretty, they have a very shabby chic look to them. I love the blue one so much I might even keep it for myself:) The other two are currently for sale in my Etsy Shop.
Here’s a couple more projects I made with my new Silhouette die cutting machine. I wanted to see just how small I could get the machine to cut so I chose a simple image, the deer silhouette, and was able to cut it 1″ x 1/2″ ! I adhered it to vintage French book paper and put it inside a pre made frame. Isn’t it cute?? I want to try some more like this but soldered them.
Next I had a wonderful wooden cigar box I wanted to make into a specimen box so I layered some patterned paper and card stock inside the box and cut out a few butterflies and a label from the same papers using the Silhouette and mounted everything inside. I love how “old world” it turned out.
Steampunk is a really popular style currently. I love the idea of combining Victorian looks with scifi and technology. If you’re not familiar think W. G. Wells, Jules Vern, lots of gears, dirigibles, googles, steam power, etc. Here’s a wiki definition too.
I wanted to try my hand at some steam punk so I made some tiny mixed media collages for soldered pendants. I used a great top hat stamp, vintage photo copies, some metal gears and vintage watch parts that I combined with pages from a vintage shop mathematic book to make my jewelry. I think they turned out pretty cool.
Steampunk Gal front:
back:
Steampunk Guy front:
back:
Here’s a couple of new charm necklaces I’ve made recently. I’m enjoying mixing altered and soldered game pieces and charms together.
The first one is sort of a pun, it’s a skeleton key necklace. A large metal key with a skull charm and a soldered domino charm with dancing skeletons.
This one is all Alice, a tiny glass bottle filled with blue beads and three soldered game charms, a domino with Alice on a blue background, an “A” scrabble tile with vintage “Alice” text and a vintage bingo tile with vintage “drink me” text.
These are both currently available in my Etsy shop, click here to visit.
It’s been awhile since I’ve made any collages on canvas so I got out a few canvas boards last week and made a couple.
Awhile ago I made an all white washed collage with a bird cage theme and was really happy how it turned out so I got out the gesso again to do some more white washing. I used a sponge brush and a light coating of gesso over some vintage music sheet and vintage book papers, then covered my 5 x 7 canvas board with music sheet using gel medium to adhere it. Then a traced a chipboard butterfly onto the back of the book paper, cut it out and adhered that. I had a lovely copy of a Victorian photo I bought from a dealer in the UK that I scanned and printed onto watercolor paper and I matted it with black cardstock that I cut with deckle edge scissors giving it that edge you see on alot of old photos. I then adhered the photo, popped up the butterfly with lots of foam tape and added layers of buttons on the butterfly and the corner of the photo along with a crocheted flower. Lastly I cut the words “spread your wings” from a vintage book and adhered that to the bottom of the collage.
I love the black and white contrast of this one alot.
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.
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.
Here’s another paper and felt collage, this time I wanted to try something new with my sewing machine so I adhered a bird onto vintage music paper and then lightly sketched a bird cage on the paper and then sewed over my pencils lines with my sewing machine, I think it turned out pretty cool and I’ll be trying this technique more often. It was a little nerve wracking knowing if I totally messed up I couldn’t fix it but I think with some more practice I can do lots more “free hand” stitching.
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:)