Tempus Fugit

This is a work for the Three Muses Weekly Challenge: Balloons. It is an encaustic collage with 2D & 3D materials. I used wooden pocket watches as the air balloons with gears for the baskets. The colored lines are white string dipped in colored encaustic. The background stripes, clouds, and text are all paper collage. A very airy and light and fun piece.

And I got these wonderful swirls by painting the background with white acrylic paint before I did the clear fill. :D 

three muses challenge: mail

the challenge at the Three Muses this week is.....mail! so i FINALLY had an opportunity to use the rusty mailbox door i found over a year ago. this is a shrine to goddess of mail.

first, i laid down some text paper from a Tim Holtz paper stack. next i used the doll head from my first and only WOYWW (remember that?) I took out the flowers that were formerly her hair and instead gave her a wig of newspaper.

i glued her onto the center of the door and wrote in some text with a calligraphy pen (rain, snow, sleet, hail; MTWRFS).

next i glued on the MAIL letters to the bottom and took some other letters form the Tim stack and cut them into circles. then i used some glossy accents clear embellishments to coat those and make them more 3D.

i then wrapped some postage string around one side (you know how i am about wrapping things) and it was finished! ta da! a shrine to the goddess of mail!

three muses challenge: fish

the challenge this week at the Three Muses is Fish! which is perfect, since this week i am really feeling some altered plastic items, and it's an great opportunity to use this it's-so-ugly-it's-cute rubber fish.

technique is pretty basic jewelry making stuff. i put an eye screw into the top of the feesh (that is how i say fish) and put it on a copper chain. i added small beads of a similar color pattern as the fish and chain.

finally, i added some tiny blue bottles i found in a (of all things) Bratz toy set from Goodwill that had a few cute little dishes, like these and plates and cups.

the fish is from an old water toy i played with until it burst. it was filled with glitter and 2 fish (the other fish can be found as a piece of my Field Researcher's Journal assemblage).
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. :(
also, not sure why i've taken a shine to displaying my things wrapped around bottles. but i have, i think it's pretty. ^_^

three muses challenge: rust

this is my entry for the three muses challenge: rust. rust has always been one of my favorite elements to use in art, so i'm always collecting rusty things. this piece was a door i found in the bathroom stall at school. it was covering some kind of pipes, but it had fallen off, so i took it!

i started with a gel medium image transfer of a phrenology diagram. then i cut out some sprocket silhouettes and added one real sprocket and some washers. the shiny rock on the right is set in a hole that was in the metal and has a nut around it. then i used some alphabet and number stamps along the top and some diamond stamps along the side. last, i added the mesh and drew on the circles.

i love that i didn't have to do any work on the background because it was already perfect! i was also very happy with the image transfer. i found out that you could use gel medium the same way you use encaustic medium, and that opened so many crafting options for me. and i love the number stamps. i bought them a while back for really cheap and forgot i had them, this is the first time i've used them and i love them! i was really surprised at how well they stamped on the rusted surface.