March 26th, 2009
One of my favorite companies for collage supplies is Artchix Studio, you can check out their website here:
http://www.artchixstudio.com
and the owner Helga has a wonderful blog as well: http://www.myartisticlife.typepad.com/ where she has art challenges and her current one is a Paris theme so I thought I’d post one of soldered collage pendants for this challenge. If you have a blog you might like to participate as well, see her blog for more info.
I love Paris as a theme and for this piece I used a page from a vintage French text book for the background and layered on top an image of the Eiffel Tower on black cardstock and then added an image a couple in love and the word “love” cut from a vintage book. I also stamped a postage cancellation onto the front piece of glass itself using Staz-On ink. The Eiffel Tower and couple images are both from Artchix collage sheets.
Tags: artchix, challenge, Eiffel Tower, France, jewelry, love, Paris, soldered
Posted in Announcements and Acknowledgments, Collage Jewelry | 5 Comments »
March 20th, 2009
I recently got a super cute stamp set of forest animals and made some Artist Trading cards with them. I layered brown and black cardstock and then added a layer cut from a vintage children’s story book and stamped tiny stars on the book paper. Then I stamped the images, cut them out and mounted them with foam tape and then added Tim Holts’ distress Stickles glitter glue to each image. It adds a nice bit of color and chunky glitter but it’s more of an aged glitter look like German glass glitter than more traditional “sparkly” glitters, it’s really fun to use. Just a note I find it takes quite awhile to dry though so keep that in mind when using it.
“Sing” The first one is a deer in the forest, I stamped a tree trunk onto a scalloped I die cut and added a cute bluebird in the tree.
“Frog Prince” This next one is an adorable frog, I added a big gold crown to him. I stamped the crown on a thin metal gold sheet and then embossed it with a stylus tool then cut it out.
“Whoo?” The last one is an owl, he’s sitting on a stamped branch with cut out paper leaves.
Tags: ACEO, animals, artist trading card, ATC, deer, frog, glitter, owl, prince, stamped, stickles, tim holtz, woodland
Posted in ATC | 1 Comment »
March 17th, 2009
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.
Tags: 3D, altered, bird, blue, blue jay, box, collage, crackle, egg, nest, shrine
Posted in 3D and Assemblage, Altered Boxes, Misc. Collage | 2 Comments »
March 13th, 2009
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.
Tags: charm, collage, crown, embossed, frame, metal, mixed media, pewter, queen, wall hanging
Posted in 3D and Assemblage, Hanging Collage, Misc. Collage | 3 Comments »
March 9th, 2009
I really liked the look and feel of my bird cage ATC’s and wanted to do something similar on a larger scale so I did a 5″ x 7″ on a canvas board. The background is vintage music sheet, the cage is stamped on a transparency sheet and the bird is an image from an old nature guide. There’s alot of embellishments on this one including the tiny tag tied with hemp string, an old cancelled German postage stamp (I added another stamped cancellation to it myself) a skeleton leaf (which is a leaf that has had everything but it’s “bones” bleached away), a piece of old wooden measuring stick, a brass book page marker and a piece of tattered fabric that I stamped an Emily Dickinson quote on. I named the piece “Hope”.
close up:
Tags: art, bird, cage, caged, canvas, collage, emily dickinson, hope, music, quote, sheet, vintage
Posted in Collages on Canvas | 5 Comments »
March 6th, 2009
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”.
Tags: ACEO, alice, art, artist trading cards, ATC, collage, queen, white rabbit, wonderland
Posted in ATC | 4 Comments »
March 4th, 2009
I recently got a really cool stamp set featuring bird cages from Catherine Moore: http://www.characterconstructions.com/ , I love her art work and her stamps are great!
I made a few ATC’s (Artist Trading Cards) with them. I started by making a base ( 3 1/2″ x 2 1/2″) for my card from black cardstock and vintage music sheets, I then added a vintage bird image. Then using black Staz-On ink I stamped the bird cage on a transparency sheet and attached it to the card with tiny brads. I then stamped part of one of the words on a tiny tag, it says ” (cage ‘d” and tied some hemp string around the tag and added it to the card with foam tape. All three cards were done the same way except the one with the quote, I turned the transparency over and stamped in white Staz-On ink a quote from Emily Dickinson that says “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul”. I love old bird images and think these cards came out really neat.
If you don’t know alot about ATC’s here’s a helpful link:
http://www.artist-trading-cards.ch/
Tags: ACEO, art, ATC, bird, birds, cage, caged, collage, emily dickinson, mixed media, small
Posted in ATC | 1 Comment »
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:
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:
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.
But….. I didn’t like the stamped bird and covered it with a vintage image of a bird from an old field guide:
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:
I really love the finished house (and I hope it sells to help out with the relief effort:))
close ups:
Tags: 3-d, altered, art, butterfly, collage, fairies, fairy, gel medium, glitter, house, paper, paper mache', vintage
Posted in 3D and Assemblage, Announcements and Acknowledgments | 3 Comments »
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.
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.
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!
Tags: art, bee, bird, butterfly, collage, fairy, insect, jewelry, pendant, scalloped, soldered, vintage, wings
Posted in Collage Jewelry | 3 Comments »
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.
Tags: art, buttons, collage, crown, fairy, gel medium, gesso, mixed media, mushroom, vintage book page, whitewashed, wings
Posted in Collages on Canvas | 1 Comment »
