Posts Tagged ‘collage’
Monday, 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 »
Friday, 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 »
Wednesday, 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 »
Tuesday, 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 »
Monday, 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 »
Wednesday, 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 »
Sunday, February 15th, 2009
I love working with beeswax but it’s a little time consuming, a little messy and a little unpredictable but it’s fun so it’s worth it:)
Here’s a little info on using beeswax. I use an old small crock pot for my beeswax, keep in mind you can’t ever use it for food (or anything else for that matter :)) ever again. Melting Pots work too but you’d have to clean it out I guess if you used it for anything else. I just leave the wax inside when I’m done, it cools and dries and I put it away and just plug it back in next time I’m ready to use it. Now here’s the time consuming part, it takes hours for the wax to melt again and I’m not a patient crafter so I hate waiting! I use a wooden spoon to help stir the wax (metal can get hot) and tweezers to dip with. I lay my items on wax paper to cool. So all you do is make your item (in this case I made a collage of a fairy in a jar and cut them out) pick it up with the tweezers and VERY quickly dip it in and out of the wax, letting any excess drip back into the pot. If you leave it too long the wax will be too thick to see your art work underneath. If that does happen you can try to melt some of it and blow it out of the way with your heat tool. You can also dip a paint brush in the melted beeswax and brush it over larger objects like canvases. Then just lay it flat to dry and cool, don’t touch it while it’s wet, it drys pretty quickly.
So, I got out my beeswax pot the other day and made some really fun ATC’s (artist trading cards). The jars are dipped, giving them the look of cloudy old glass, it’s hard to capture in a photo but they are very cool in person.
These will be listed for sale in my Etsy shop over the next few days.
Tags:ACEO, art, artist trading cards, ATC, beeswax, captured, collage, fairies, fairy, jar, mixed media
Posted in ATC | 6 Comments »
Monday, February 9th, 2009
Woodland animals and themes are so hot right now and I love them! Lots of deer, mushrooms, squirrels, etc, so cute! So I’ve made some more pendants with some woodland critter illustrations cut from that same vintage 1929 children’s book I’ve been using alot lately (poor book looks like swiss cheese now:))
Cute little squirrel in a red jacket and black pants, the back says “Mr. Bushy Tail”:
A little fawn, this is one of my favorite!:
Sweet little grey bunny rabbit:
Cute brown sparrow:
I really want to find some vintage images of some mushrooms to make some pendants with, I love mushrooms, they always remind me of Alice in Wonderland:)
Tags:animals, art, bunny, collage, deer, fawn, jewelry, mixed media, pendant, rabbit, soldered, squirrel, woodland
Posted in Collage Jewelry | No Comments »
Friday, February 6th, 2009
I recently went through some stuff I had stored in my dad’s basement and found my old button jar. It’s a huge mason jar with tons of vintage buttons in it, I was so glad to find it:) I made a couple of soldered pendants with a couple of the more unusual ones.
This first one appears to be a shell button (maybe mother of pearl), the back side was pitted, dirty and had some cool green running through it. I cut the word “curiosity” from an old dictionary and added it to the button, glued it to a piece of vintage French book paper and sandwiched it between glass and using a wider tape than normal soldered around it. It makes for a very cool shadow box look I think.
The second one also looks to be shell, it’s white with a little sparkle to it and has a beautiful embossed design in it.
Tags:altered, art, book, button, collage, french, jewelry, mixed media, paper, pendant, shadow box, soldered, vintage
Posted in Collage Jewelry | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, January 27th, 2009
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.
Tags:3D, altered art, art, bust, collage, mannequin, mixed media, paper mache'
Posted in Large Collage Projects | 5 Comments »
