Thank yous, snowmen and texture

Happy New Year everyone. I hope we all have a prosperous and peaceful 2009.
Thank you to everyone who has wished me well in my show. And to the wonderful women who have given me online awards.
I promise to be more punctual with my blog reading and my blogging now that the holidays are done and hunting season is almost over.

I love texture. So I decided to do a piece devoted to just that. But this time I am using all manmade things instead of the usual naturals I use so much .
So I took a bunch of odd little canvases and glued them together using Liquid Nails. Then I covered it all with tissue paper.



Then I just started putting whatever I had laying around on the piece. There is burlap and chains and bamboo skewers and garden wire and shingles and bricks for dollhouses and beads and textured paper and bubblewrap and stuff.

So I'm thinking that when I am done dressing it, I am going to coat the whole thing with gesso. Probably a couple of coats. Then I am going to paint using bright colors mixed with glaze. This is new for me. I don't use a lot of bright colors. And I have never used glaze before. I would like to be able to layer color over color. I'm thinking the glaze will let that happen. I hope. Anybody got any hints?

These are some more snowmen I made because...well...because you can never have enough right? And they are just so much fun to make.

So that's what I've been up to.

My show ends on the 14th. I hear people are enjoying it. I sold a couple of small pieces, and am hopeful that someone will buy one of the bigger ones.

I guess I will put everything in Etsy when I get it all back. But I am not sure that my kind of stuff sells online. We'll see.

Peace

My Show and Snowmen

So my show opened and everyone seemed to enjoy it. My pieces are all hanging. The work on the pedestals is the artist I shared the show with. I am going to take better pictures and will post them when I do.

The weather here is simply dreadful and nasty. We got a 1/4 inch of ice last night. had to thaw the satelites with a heat gun. Man I am NOT a winter person.

These are some snowmen I made from Cloth Paper Scissors. I have such fun making them. Just playing ya know? I am so behind in everything. An altered book RR, a personal swap with Val. Housework. you name it I am behind in it.

This is hunting season, so we have had a big hairy guy friend of Jimis staying with us a lot. So I have been doing the cooking and catering to men thing. Not fun.

But I am hoping to get back on track soon.

What is it about this time of year, no matter how often I say it will be stressfree and easy, it never is.

Peace

The Guardian

Awhile ago I posted the beginning of this piece. Then I kind of backburnered him. When I found out about the show I didn't think I would have time to finish, but YAY I did.
This shot shows his feet which I added claws to. They came from my really old cat who sheds them on a regular basis. I don't know why but he does. And being me, I save them His head is made from the Devils Claw my buddy Rose sent me from Arizona. Truly weird stuff. I gave him red garnet eyes.

All told he stands just short of a foot in height. I decorated his base with a bunch of stones I pried from old costume jewelry. I really love the skull bead. The crystals towards his tail are also from Rose. She collected them for me. Rose, you rock!!

Sprinkled around the jewels are micron beads from Fire Mountain. The base is a slab of agate I use for a weight when I'm working. But it seemed like it needed to be used for this. So I'll just have to go outside and find a rock to use for weight instead.

Hope you like him.

Peace

The winner and the Winter Queen

First, the winner of the give-away is Carol from Art-N-Quilt. Congratulations Carol. And thanks to everyone who took part in my very first give-away.
So awhile ago I started the Winter Queen and gave up on her.
I just couldn't figure out how to finish her up. Then my sister Kate suggested the fabric treatment and VOILA she was right.Itis just what I needed.
I pried up part of the fox fur and glued it inplace. Then I just twisted it till it looked right. Then I sewed a few seed beads to hold the twist in place. Then I used a tack on the back to secure it.

All in all I'm pretty happy with her. She will be going into the show.

Peace

Sculpting the wind

I forgot to say about the Dark Angel that she is beaded on both sides and meantto be hung from the ceiling.
So, awhile ago I posted about the wind arund here. It blows all the time seems like. And we live a couple of 15 feet from the edge of a pine forest, so it sounds sometimes like being in a tornado.
So it was bothering me one night and I started thinking of that song 'They Call The Wind Mariah'. And I decided to sculpt the wind.
I LOVE using window screen. You can get some very cool effects from it. So I cut a piece and turned the edges and then just folded it till I was happy. Then I started beading with colors that match the screen and tattered strips of chiffon just for more texture.
Then I made the face from sculpey and beaded around her.

Then I cut another peicec and turned the edges and mounted the piece with 26 g silver wire and Mariah was born.

I am VERY happy with how she turned out.

But man oh man what a lot of work. You could go blind doing that kind of beading.

Peace

Angel Obscura

This is 'Angel Obscura' which is Dark Angel in Spanish so I'm told. I sculpted the wing in flexible modeling paste. Then I painted the whole wing in metallic black and hilighted in metallic purple and blue.

Then I drilled holes for the chain to hang and beaded in 15/0 seed beads from Fire Mountain Gems.

I'm not going to share what I used for the base at this time. Sorry, I usually share everything, but not this time.

This piece is about 2 feet wide and about 1 1/2 feet hi.

Hope you like it.

Peace

Yay I'm back online!!!

Hi everybody! I feel like I've been gone for ages. Our computer died and we had to wait awhile to get it fixed. And living where I do, and not knowing anyone in the area really, I didn't have access to one to use. I did go to the library a couple of times and used theirs, but all I managed to do was ask a friend to let you all know where I was.
I have some big news. I am going to be having a gallery show in Dec. It is my first and I will be showing with another mixed media artist. This is my first show and I am very excited.
So this is one of the peices I made for it. The face is painted and covered with pics of silver screen sirens. The film reels are mounted with liquid nails. The curly stuff is film strips. I call her 'Goddess' Of The Silver Screen. Then I wanted to try my hand at mosiacs for awhile, but couldn't get inspired by anything. Then I was given a broken mirror and thought 'ooh this could be cool'. So I tried to break it, but it is a really old mirror and wouldn't shatter like I wanted. So I got some mirror tiles and had a lot of fun smashing them.
Then I placed them around and glued them in place. Then since I mounted them on canvas I used modeling paste instead of grout. I thought the grout might be too heavy. Then I painted using metallic craft paint. And there you go. It is called 'Reflections'.

Finally, to celebrate being back among the artful, I am doing my first give-away. This is a really fun 2009 calendar. I will pick a name from the first 20 people who leave comments here. I hope you win it, it is a pretty calendar.

Thanks to my friends who E'd asking if I was ok. I am sorry I couldn't respond. But I was very touched that you missed me.

Peace