Posts Tagged ‘paper mache’’

Spellbook

Friday, September 4th, 2009

I had a cute little paper mache book ornament that I’d been hanging on to, not sure what to do with it and I finally got the idea to make it into a spellbook for Halloween. I painted the entire book grey and then added crackle paint to the outside, and adhered silver tinsels around the sides. On the front I added an image of a little girl and put a purple witches hat eyelet on her head, I put a purple rhinestone in the hole of the eyelet to cover it up:) I stamped a few skulls on the front with Staz-on ink and added pink and purple rhinestones to their eyes. On the side I added a vintage looking stamped label and wrote “Spellbook”. I thought inside the little witch could be hiding a secret and so I filled a tiny glass bottle with beads and glitter and added some fibers to the top and a tiny label that says “poison” *insert evil witchy laugh* 😉 I think it turned out cute!

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For a Good Cause

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:

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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:

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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.

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But….. I didn’t like the stamped bird and covered it with a vintage image of a bird from an old field guide:

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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:

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I really love the finished house (and I hope it sells to help out with the relief effort:))

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close ups:

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Ambition

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.

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I spray painted all the wood and drilled the dowel to the base.

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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.

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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.

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I also added a vintage tape measure around the waist and big vintage button and more vintage buttons around the neck.

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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.

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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.

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