this week, i love shrines! the one above can be found at
Milliande.com along with tutorials. it's a common theme amongst modern altered artists, and i have taught it as a lesson to some of my students before. but i never get tired of it. there's something nice about taking the mundane and turning it into something special just by giving it a home.
so i started with an old box i got at a consignment shop, which happened
to be originally from dollar tree ( i knew there was a reason i loved it). actually, it was originally pretty hideous. it was a weird bluey purple color with a cliche snowman on the front. but it was 49 cents, so i figured i would make something out of it. and after housing miscellaneous materials for a while, then becoming 2 different incomplete and bad projects, it finally turned into this!
inspired by
Lindsey Heath's hollow books, i added text to the back first. then i punch a hole through the front, almost literally, i didn't exactly have the right tools for the job, so it was a lot of cutting and punching.
next i added some fake moss, the first time i've used it! and i love it. after that, i had to find a subject to be a jumping point for the rest of the project, so i chose the ceramic egg with the hole and glued it to the back of the inside. for the outside, i spray painted it copper and then used another first time material for me, spray glitter glue. i like the effect it had in some places where it bubbled up from not letting the copper dry first.
next i added the feathers to the top with hot glue, set in beads. to make it more unified, i added some glitter around the base of the feathers that matched the paint. for the inside, i added more feathers and a rubber frog to create a little more scenery, and a flower on the opposite side.
i also stamped a small birdcage in the corner and added a gear and some wire mesh.
for the rest of the outside, i
used some more text to connect it all, a chipboard frame around that, and a key that i painted copper and embellished with gold glitter. the little feet on the bottom are made from painted bottle caps, but maybe i'll go back and fashion some bird feet for it instead. i also think that i would want to have a way for it to hang on the wall as well.
the piece is finished with some copper watch wire wrapped around the outside to give it more of a caged feeling and the egg has feathers and moss stuffed into it.
overall i am very happy with this piece, and i don't feel that the pictures do it justice. there's a wonderful "secret garden" feeling you get when you look through the outside window into the nook where the egg lies.
the theme at Take a Word this week is architecture, which gave me a chance to use a neat feature on my Cricut as well as a bauble i found on the ground. i created a whimsical and bright cityscape in a gingerbread cookies tin. the background and city are both cut from scrapbook paper and the city is cut using a feature on the Plantin Schoolbook cartridge for Cricut.
bottom. i found the cityscape bauble about a year ago in a parking lot at school. i honestly never thought i was going to use it, but here we are! the color scheme is all based off of that.
i outline the city and clouds with a black pen and echoed that with some black thread that gives the piece some foreground. i added some yarn and beads and was done! i like the minimalist and airiness of the piece, i think i'll try to work lighter more often.
which led to this necklace!
Gingersnaps Creations this week is T Y P E W R IT E R S, which gave me the perfect opportunity to use the typewriter stamp i got from Michael's.
bookmark at the bottom to make sure my stamp would show up.
there will be more animal pieces to come, but who knows when. stupid school is back in session and i have to do a bunch of stupid things i don't want to. :(
inspired by Jane Anne Wynn's Altered Curiosities, what i love this week is plastic 
animals! i have yet to actually create my piece, but i will probably try to make something for the Three Muses challenge this week, which is fish. so i am off to craft, i leave you with my menagerie, pictured above, and this pig on a screwdriver.
happy for this theme, and it gave me an excuse to use all of these gorgeous tiny gears and cogs i harvested.
this week, i love shrines! the one above can be found at Milliande.com along with tutorials. it's a common theme amongst modern altered artists, and i have taught it as a lesson to some of my students before. but i never get tired of it. there's something nice about taking the mundane and turning it into something special just by giving it a home.
to be originally from dollar tree ( i knew there was a reason i loved it). actually, it was originally pretty hideous. it was a weird bluey purple color with a cliche snowman on the front. but it was 49 cents, so i figured i would make something out of it. and after housing miscellaneous materials for a while, then becoming 2 different incomplete and bad projects, it finally turned into this!
next i added the feathers to the top with hot glue, set in beads. to make it more unified, i added some glitter around the base of the feathers that matched the paint. for the inside, i added more feathers and a rubber frog to create a little more scenery, and a flower on the opposite side.
used some more text to connect it all, a chipboard frame around that, and a key that i painted copper and embellished with gold glitter. the little feet on the bottom are made from painted bottle caps, but maybe i'll go back and fashion some bird feet for it instead. i also think that i would want to have a way for it to hang on the wall as well.
so for our anniversary this year, my fiance and i took to the internet. he got a bunch of new music books and supplies that "i" bought for him and "he" got me some new art books and 
supplies! (pictured above) i got some tissue tape, paper stacks and configuration boxes from idea-ology, The Secrets of Rusty Things, and Altered Curiosities. soooo happy to expand my book collection and i've wanted these forever!
my inspiration comes from Lisa Kettel's Altered Art Circus, pictured above, that i received as a 
gift from one of my friends. i mostly loved how she altered her animals, using bright colors and glitter.
then i added the background, a diamond pattern from one of my old sketchbooks, that was once going to be an alice in wonderland page, but never happened.
honesty, i was never a fan of this while i worked on it. but now, looking back through the pictures of it as i post this, i do have a much better fondness for it. i think i do like it. :)
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