More From Camp: Teeny Tiny Shriney

I was fortunate enough to take a class from Michael DeMeng last week, entitled "Teeny Tiny Shriney". He is the best! He taught us all about mixing paints to age and integrate parts to make a cohesive shrine. Here's what I made in his class, out of one of the tiny-sized Altoids tins. The sides were built up with Aves Apoxie Sculpt clay, my new favorite art supply! This clay was also used to adhere heavy and/or oddly shaped items, such as the rusty bottle cap, the typewriter key, and the small finial at the bottom of the shrine.

 

Most of the parts I brought from home, but I purchased the awesome "floating shift" typewriter key and the Japanese doll hand there. My friend Lora, who attended art camp with me, was nice enough to give me the eye, which really makes the piece. 

I have been saving that perfect half-circle rusty bottle cap forever. I'm glad it finally found the home it deserves.

Mixed Media Works from Art Camp

I recently went to art camp! It was actually an art retreat hosted by Art Is...You, and it was a blast! We took several classes and learned so much. The creative energy was contagious. It was like finding your people, all in one place.

One of my favorite classes was "Don't Take Yourself Too Seriously", taught by LorriMarie Jenkins. She was so fun and encouraging. The class focused on just having fun with your art. We had a six hour time period and we all made two pieces, both measuring 12" by 12". What?!? I am a plodder and a thinker! I need more planning time! But not in this class...I really learned to trust my instincts, and I was pleasantly surprised at the outcome.

Here's my first piece:

We layered each board with old book pages, then used lots of torn paper and fabric to add texture. Once we had a base collage, we added a copy of an old photograph and embellished it with ears or hats. This one has a mask because I accidentally ripped the image around her eye area. No problem; I just cut out some eyes from a moon image and slapped them down. Once we had the image of the woman on, we coated the entire piece with Mod Podge, and then gessoed everything except the image. I got way too heavy with the gesso on this one, but that's why we make two, to learn from our mistakes.

Once the gesso was down, we added in color using glaze, and then painted in details like polka dots.

Here are some details so you can get a better idea of the layers:

Burlap makes for great texture:

All that, before lunch!

After lunch, we started on our second work. On this one, I used more papers and less gesso. The text says, "the moonlight becomes her". In case you're wondering, that's Mrs. Grover Cleveland there. I hope she doesn't mind that I gave her a butterfly wing headdress!

Some details:

I may hang it in my turquoise bathroom, because the color really works with the wall color:

If you ever have a chance to go to an art retreat, do it! It was so incredibly inspiring. I have so many projects I'm dying to do now. Plus, I learned a lot of new techniques and worked with materials I'd never heard of, like the amazing Stabilo 8046 pencil, which outlines in a lovely dark black, but is water soluble, so you can feather a lovely shadow out from it. You can see this on the outer edge and around the images of the women in both of my pieces.

I have more to share from art camp. I'll try to get a few posts up this weekend. 

October First

Happy October! I'm celebrating Halloween this year with a new Halloween banner, made with supplies from Alpha Stamps. I had so much fun making this, and it looks great on my mantel with some of my Halloween decorations. I really tried to jazz this banner up with rhinestone stars, Jolee's boutique skull cameos, and tons of trim, ribbon, and ric rac.

The center spells out "boo" in some orange-painted alphabet letters from Tim Holtz, mounted on accordion-fold medallions. 

 

Here's one of my favorite pennants, because I love this crazy chipboard bat cut-out.  I gave it a little detail with a white colored pencil, and slapped some cat eyes on there so he can see in the dark.

Just for fun, here's another view of the mantel. It's starting to look spooky around here!

Halloween Fun with Spellbinders

When Spellbinders recently sent me some stickpins with corresponding dies and some new embossing plates, I immediately chose to do a Halloween themed craft. After all, ’tis the season!

I made a little witchy collage for the stickpin, and then a Halloween tag to display the pin on. To get the creepy background look on the tag, I embossed a plain manilla tag using the Artisan X-Plorer embosser along with the “Poetry” embossing plate, and then lightly inked the tag to highlight the embossed areas. I then layered the tag with some Halloween papers and a couple of bats. What a great setting for my stickpin!

To make the stickpin, I cut out a piece of orange cardstock using the correct die. I found an image of a little girl, gave her a witch’s hat cut from some scrapbook paper, and then embellished it all with glitter and a couple of rhinestones. I outlined it all with thin black edge stickers to make the image pop.  The stickpin is attached to the card with a removable glue dot, so you can easily remove it for wear. It’s the perfect little Halloween gift for your favorite witch or goblin!

Recently, I’ve been doing a lot of playing with my Artisan X-Plorer, and it’s not been all about Halloween. I’ve made stationery, bookmarks, and different stickpins for every day wear, and they’re all posted on Craftster! Check them out and find out how handy the Artisan X-Plorer is for all your embossing and die-cutting needs.

Batty Boo Blocks

More little trick or treaters! I had my sweet hubby cut some 2" by 4" pieces of wood for me, and I painted and collaged these "Batty Boo Blocks". This is my favorite Halloween craft I've done this year, but I'm certain there will be more to come.

I used some gorgeous orange paper by BoBunny, plus some chipboard bat wings and some images of kids from Alpha Stamps collage sheets. Because the bat wings are thick, the kids are raised up a bit from the background block. Here they are as individuals. 

Marta, the little witch:

Franklin, the wizard:

 Reagan, the poisoner (she scares me a little):

And Michael, the masked:

Trick or treat!

Four Happy Jacks

This weekend, I'm heading out of town with my mom, mother in law, and sister, for our annual girls' weekend. I can't wait! We usually try to get each other little gifties, just for fun. In the past, I've done little goodie bags for everyone, but this year, I did something different. Michaels has their plastic pumpkins on sale, so I bought four of the little ones and painted them up for Halloween. Happy Jacks! I love them all together, so once I give three away, I may go purchase a couple more so I can line my mantle.

I gave my MIL first choice, and she chose Jack #2, the craziest one. That was my fave, too!

Augustus and Edgar Prepare for Halloween, now with better photos

Halloween is the one time of the year that Augustus feels he can spread his glorious bat wings and be himself. Here he poses with his pet raven, Edgar, in eager anticipation of the big day.

This is made from another style of atc hutch from Alpha Stamps. It's similar to the one I used in Melancholy Circus, but this Halloween hutch has a spooky spiderweb header, and comes with three decorative skulls (I used the two smaller skulls) and a masonite bat (not used).

To get the glittery effect on the web, I painted the header black and then gave it a good spray of copper colored Glimmer Mist. I used tracing paper to determine how to cut the black and white paper around the web.

The sides are covered with orange cardstock with a lovely black web-like ribbon layered on top to give it texture and added spookiness.

Augustus and the raven stand out from the background with the help of adhesive foam. Happy Halloween!