Skeleton Bride & Groom

One of my latest creations here at The Skull Factory! Created by lopping off the heads of a cake topper & substituting skull heads, caulk, paint & webbing spray.  I'm creating a little shrine to house them and am also working on an entire mariachi band of skeletons.  In my world you can never have too many skulls and happy skeletons about...

New Banner

All morning I've been monkeying around with my graphics programs trying to create banners for my Art-Fire store. Their banners are so narrow it's hard to come up with an image that looks decent. The one I added at the top of my blog looks just terrible compressed to the 100 x 760 Art-Fire requires, so I won't be using it there. Though I like how it looks here, uncompressed the way it should be!!!!

I did finally come up with something to use, made from a digital collage I created, seriously cropped down & with text on top.


Here it is:

I also made up a bunch of collage sheets. I started with vintage postcard & cabinet card images, super-imposed them over my own landscape photos or journal pages, sized & retouched for quality then created full size collage sheets. It's a time consuming process, but I love doing it!!!! I'm out of my 28 lb. paper that I like to use for printing so getting to use them in my work will have to wait until I hit a supply store.

The little guy is spending the day with my mom & I hope to have a highly productive day because of it. There are at least three charm bracelets I need to finish, a bunch of items to photograph, journaling I want to do and a few supply orders to be placed. If I want to do all that I'd better stop playing with Picasa and get moving!

This Is A Shoe

This is a shoe. The Sea Queen's Shoe as a matter of fact. It's made from an old, ugly bridesmaid's shoe. You know the kind. Pointy heeled, too tight in the toes, shiny satin material. Every gal I know has at least one pair in her closet. More if she's unlucky.



Mine had been kicking around for decades. Stuffed into the box they came in, beneath all my other boxes of shoes, waiting around for someone to don them again I suppose. One day I made up my mind to get rid of those shoes once and for all. Why was I keeping them??? It's not like bright red satin shoes went with anything I had in my closet. Was I hanging onto them in case a wedding party walked by my house looking for someone who owned such a pair of shoes to help them out? Not likely.




As I went to toss them inspiration struck. I could make something cool from them! I could cover them with gook, add some doo-dads and paint and make them into ART! Yes! The shoes would live on in a new, much improved incarnation.



Out came the molding paste, shells, crab claws, fish jaws (yes, fish jaws), crystals, bits of broken jewelry and paints. A mad frenzy ensued, molding paste clung to every surface including most of my arm and hands. But that's OK! I was creating something cool. And when it was over, I heard a sigh. The Sea Queen had finally found someone to make her some shoes. (She's still waiting for the other one because I haven't been inspired to make it yet.)

Masonite

A friend of my mother's gave me a bunch of masonite scraps quite a while ago. They've been in bags at the back of the studio closet for ages, gathering dust. While looking for a certain tool the other day I came across them and decided it was high time I did something with them!

After applying a thin coat of gesso to a few pieces I started in with the glazes, paints & collage. A few of them are still in progress, but this one is finished. I think.....

A Few Journal Pages

Last night I managed to do 7 journal pages. I'd planned on doing 2, but once I got going I just kept at it for hours. A very satisfying feeling to get so much done in one evening!

A Few Journal Pages

These journal pages were started in the classes I took with Kelly Kilmer then finished at home later.

The first and third ones were created by painting, stamping layering opaque and transparent images then using markers to highlight images and add text.

The second page has layered collage and paint on the left-hand page and decorative tape over paint on the right-hand page.

If there's one thing to remember about mixed-media it's layering cannot be faked! In order to have rich, interesting pages multiple materials are a must.

Productive Bed Rest

I've been on bed rest for the past couple of days, which we all know can be pretty boring. However, over the years I've managed to make bed rest productive. Countless times I've taken a pile of supplies to sort through or a box of art supplies and my bed tray into my room and created art, while still following doctor's orders. This time is no different.

I've been spending my time sorting through art supplies, doing the BIG PURGE once again. It was only a few months ago that I went through everything in my studio and amassed a pile of books, supplies, ephemera, etc that I felt I no longer needed. This time I was still able to come up with a few boxes of stuff I want to pass along. This constant purging leads to a much neater studio and also helps me to let go of that pack rat mentality that most artists have. For whatever reason, we amass stuff that we think we will later use in our art. And, yes, sometimes we do use these "must save" items, but I suspect that the majority of the time the things never get used. Perhaps it is because artists tend to be cyclic. What we love one day we may not the next. Therefore, what we once had to save for future use becomes less appealing to us over time. Our art evolves and grows so the items we hold on to loose their meaning.

I've also managed to paint two pairs of leather shoes while resting in bed. Both were purchased at the thrift store, cost me less than $3 a pair and are now far cooler and more unique when I brought them into the house a few weeks ago. One pair, a short styled paddock boot, I'm keeping. The other, a boxy looking heeled shoe, is off to Unique Boutik, a local consignment shop that deals in vintage and unusual items. Just last week this same store took my painted leather purse and a whole bunch of vintage hats, jewelry and clothing for their store. The prospect of making a few extra dollars on my vintage items is great, but even more thrilling was the fact that the owner wanted my painted purse and asked me to bring in more items like it! Proof that my new endeavor of painting or altering items for sale has potential. Also, proof that I need create a stockpile of such items, all unique and one of a kind of course, and get my Etsy shop set up.

And now I am off to bed where I'll create something new, while watching endless episodes of the West Wing on DVD and have a very snuggly kitty for company. Productive bed rest at it's finest....

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Delightful Denim

There is something so comforting about denim. Especially old, well worn denim jeans and jackets. Who doesn't have a favorite pair of jeans that are a bit worn out at the knees or the backside? Yet we can't seem to part with these items. They are comfortable, comforting, and timeless.

Ages ago my mother gave me an old denim jacket that she'd painted a horse on the back of. Although I loved it I felt it needed something more. An updating and reinventing if you will. So I cut, sewed, dyed, bleached and enhanced it to create something new and totally different all the while retaining the work she had done on it. The result is an oh-so comfortable, vibrant piece of wearable art, or altered couture if you prefer. It's still denim and has that comforting feel to it, but it's a very different denim. Richer somehow and with a softer feel to it than it had before.

Alterations

I've been having a blast altering some of the items I bought at the thrift store. I've 3 projects in the works, a pair of jeans being turned into a skirt, a pair of shoes I'm painting & a top and skirt I'm combining into a dress. I've also finished a few projects. I painted a small leather purse, finished altering a jacket & have finally photographed the skull jeans I created.

I'm really digging all this altering. My head is chock full of ideas and I cannot wait to see them all come to fruition.

Thrift Store Treasures

The past few days I've been having a blast prowling through the thrift stores looking for items to alter. I hit pay dirt at three different stores and now have a stockpile of jeans, skirts, shoes and purses to get creative with. I also unearthed some fabulous vintage items. A mouton lamb coat from the 50's, a little black dress from the 60's and a full-length wool coat from the late 50's or early 60's. At one store I managed to pick up 9 pairs of jeans, 11 skirts, 3 pairs of leather shoes and 2 leather purses for the bargain price of $40! The items I bought are all in great shape, are major brand names (not that I give a hoot about brand names, but some do...) and are perfect for digging in and altering in any way I see fit. I may never shop retail again.

Altered Couture

I need to go scrounge around the thrift stores. I'm in altered couture mode. I feel the need to take discarded clothing, slash, dye, sew, paint, stamp and manipulate in any whatever way that strikes my fancy in order to create items that are fun, funky, full of personality and expression of my self. Having finished the jeans and jacket I was working on I've been riffling thorugh my closet looking for more articles to alter. nothing in there strikes my fancy, thus the need for a good bout of Thrift Store shopping! In the meantime, I'll imagine all the ways I can transform something old into something new and see what kind of inspiration I get.

And while I do that imagining, I'll take a few moments with my handy, dandy camera to get photos of those altered jeans and the jacket to post here!

Postcard Mania

I've been busy this week making postcards. A few of them have gone out via Post-Crossing, a few others are for mail-art swaps. and the rest are for use in the near future, for when the urge to send mail-art strikes. I love making postcards and then sending them off into the world. I like to imagine that each person who encounters them along their way, from the mail man who picks them up to the people who handle and sort them in the various postal warehouses they pass through, might stop a moment to view them, perhaps ponder them or smile at them before sending them on their merry way. It probably isn't true, but it's a nice little fantasy I have.

Post-Crossing has been exceptionally fun for a lover of postcards. Not only do I get to send out as many as I wish, but each one is assigned a unique id alpha-numeric code so that the receiver can log it in once it arrives. Once logged I get to find out when they arrived, how long it took and read the comments made by the receiver. For each one I send out that gets logged back in I receive one in return. Fun for me no matter how you look at it!

I've also been busy altering some clothing. A denim jacket that once belonged to my mother has undergone a complete transformation. It's been dyed, bleached, stamped, cut, sewn and painted. The result is a stunning, funky jacket that I can't wait to show off. I also painted a pair of jeans with skulls, done free-hand with paint pens. These too are fun and funky. So much so that I just may submit them to Altered Couture just to see if they get picked for publication.

I love altering clothes. It's something I have always done. Long before it became the popular thing to do. Ages before books & magazines geared toward altering clothing, creating wearable art or any of the other catch phrases now in use, were even thought of. Am I ahead of my time when it comes to these things? I don't think so. For what bored teenage girl hasn't taken out a pen or marker and doodled all over her jeans or created a jeans purse? I know all the girls I hung out with did it. Granted, it was usually me who instigated the happenings, but that's just because I was more fearless than they were and was always the one to say, "Hey, let's do such and such!" before anyone else would think to say it. Or maybe I am ahead of my time. I'll go with that because it makes me sound so revolutionary....

Digital Collage

I've been messing around with Picasa again. Trying to explore its many options and features. For me the best thing about the program is the ability to make digital collages from my art work. I just love the multi-layered collage option. It makes things look so darned cool & adds another dimension to my work. The piece shown is a multi-layered collage created from one of my Soul Collage cards and a journal page I'd done for a round robin. I've altered the colors to make them a bit more "freaky" than they actually were.