Tuesday, June 22, 2010

French Theatre Box


This is something new I've recently finished (I think - LOL). I first need to give a big THANK YOU to The Graphics Fairy, where most of the images came from, and to The Vintage Moth as well. Couldn't have done it without you!

I had actually stopped in at a nearby tobacco shop to inquire about cigar boxes because I wanted to store some craft tools, papers and such in them. Sara, the manager, graciously gave me several, at no charge! Sweet! One was this one, which immediately started to give me ideas, leading me to spend hours hovering over the computer, locating images that gave me more ideas, and voila!

I have more photos, but haven't figured out how to use Picasa or ?? to be able to show them elsewhere.

I know this type of thing has a name (exposing my ignorance now). Is it a diorama? Nothing religious about it, so it's not a reliquary, right? Please enlighten me if you can!

I combined three images on this side of the box, the clown figure, the dog and the woman; I used some of the iridescent water color on the clown.

I wanted to give the entire piece a kind of surrealistic feel, but this side sort of goes all the way, don't you think? I just loved the various pieces, and this is how it came together. I think it adds to the humorous aspect.

This is the chorus line, on the back of the box. I added some iridescent paint here too.

This is the inside; you can see the "ceiling" here, where I put black paper and added the posters. If you look at the enlarged version, you can see better the back wall. I first found the graphic of the stage, and I cut out the blank center. I was so excited to find a great graphic the right size and image to represent the movie screen, and put the two together - I thought it turned out pretty neat!

The wall behind Madame.

Friday, June 4, 2010

Clay Vase



For my sister's birthday, I made a vase to go in her newly redecorated kitchen, which is mostly red, with some black and white accents. I started with a plain glass vase and covered it with a relatively thin layer of red polymer clay, which had been run through my pasta machine (strictly for clay, of course!). This took some time, since bubbles tend to form between the glass and clay. I used a straight pin to poke the bubbles and continued to flatten and smooth the clay around the vase, trying to keep it the same thickness all over. I took black clay and white clay and made a sort of zebra pattern with it, as well as a cross-hatch pattern. One of the things I love about working with clay is being able to make different sizes of my design! You can see in the middle of the vase are some of the cross-hatch squares, and around the lip are the same, only smaller. Around the shoulder are some even smaller. I put a glaze on it, baked it, and voila! I found some flowers to continue the theme, added some greenery and some pebbles for stability, and wrapped it up! It is sitting in her kitchen garden window, hopefully reminding her each day how much she means to me.