Weird Antique Store Finds

Yes, you can own you very own Native American boggle-googley-eye guy

 with a peace pipe (clearly filled with more than tobacco) for just $20!  

Creeeeppy!

Same antique store - they are apparently greyhound lovers.  

When you use the bathroom, no matter where you are, you are being observed by

 thousands of eyes.  The entire bathroom was covered in dog pictures.  

After seeing the googly-eyed picture, then the bathrooms, 

I felt a little ... exposed.

And most recently, I found a handmade, plush Mr. T doll.  

He was cozily sitting in a (real, antique) high chair in the front room of a shop somewhere.  

Complete with gold-like chains, bracelet and rings, he was pretty bad ass.  For a $32 doll.

Steampunk Cornell Box

 This is my first attempt at making my own Joseph Cornell inspired artwork.

His "collection" boxes are so cool.  My theme (obviously) was Steampunk.  The background of the piece is a sheet of antique book photocopied and cut to fit.  I think it took 4-5 sheets total to cover the whole box inside and out.

The box is made from an empty cereal box.  Most of the items inside were either found or bought.  Info about the robot is below.  Lots of the gears and larger electronic-looking pieces were taken from an old broken electric pencil sharpener I took apart.  Best. Idea. Ever!

The robot is actually a mini wooden manikin painted black and dry-brushed silver.  You can get yours here.  His eyes are brass eyelets and the gears are tiny watch gears.

 This is the "lid" to the pencil sharpener turned upside down, the motor from the sharpener glued to it, a light bulb from home and copper craft wire.  Anything that needed to look "old" was painted either black or rusty brown and then I dry-brushed metallic paint over it to give it a metal look.  In the background are more gears from the sharpener.

 This is the circuit board from the pencil sharpener inside a little paper mache box lid.  I painted it all brass, copper and grey.  The clock hands were purchased form Michael's and the metal disc is another piece of the sharpener.  I added wires to hook it all together.

This is a small wooden spool wrapped in copper wire attached to a large plastic disc from the sharpener I painted rusty copper - to which I glued gears, wire, another even smaller wooden spool and a toy compass.  It was tricky to get this to stand upright, but after some fiddling, it worked.

Other materials I used:
copper brads on the outside of the box to look like rivets
other steampunk-like gears & stuff - purchased from Michael's
1/2" foamboard - I drew and cut out a couple of my own gears, painted them black, then dry brushed a metallic silver or copper over it.
Aleene's Turbo Tacky Glue (I LOVE this glue!)

Scrap Paper Art

Below are directions for this super easy, super cheap art project.

Materials:
several sheets of scrap paper, similar theme or color family
1-2 stretched canvases
white glue or Mod Podge
paint brush
scissors
paper cutter

Directions:
1. Start by cutting up the scrap paper.  I used a paper cutter to make straight long cuts, then used the scissors to make irregular-sized lengths.  Most of the strips were 1/4 - 1/2" wide.

2. Add a layer of Mod Podge or glue to an area of the canvas using a paint brush.  I used 4 parts glue to 1 part water to make it more workable and not as sticky.

3. Assemble pieces onto the glued area of the canvas.  Try not to make straight lines.  Have some pieces horizontal and others vertical.    There are no wrong ways!

4. Keep applying glue and paper to the canvas until the entire area was covered.  you may find yourself cutting more pieces to fit into areas - that's okay!

5. When done, apply a final coat layer over the entire picture.

6. When dry (about 24 hours) add another layer to ensure the paper is completely sealed.

And that's it!  A completed scrap paper art hanging that is completely yours!  These two took me just about 2 hours to complete.

Marionette Poster Art

 While vacationing in Brown County and wandering through the small town shops, we came across a puppet theater called the Melchior Marionettes.  I had never been to a puppet theater before and thought it really cool that an art like this was still around.

Unfortunately, it was closed when we were there and we were not able to see a performance.  However, outside there were these three small posters hanging in the outdoor performance area.

I love the old look of them and the nostalgic feeling they give.

 

Paper Fusion Lantern Kit

For wine and chatter girls craft night I found these two lanterns and wanted to give them a try.  

They were a little on the pricey side for an unfinished craft, but the light was supposed to be extra fancy-pants and the novelty of making a lamp that would be whatever I wanted was pretty appealing.

The kit is called Paper Fusion comes with 4 unfinished square sides and a brace bar, instructions, a LED light bulb with cord and switch, translucent papers for making your own design/collage/glitter disaster, and metal screws.

I picked an assortment of metallic paint because I wanted some glittery parts.  Liquid Metal acrylic paint is one of my favorite metallic paints.  It's affordable and it looks amazing!

 First poured a glass of wine.   Then we painted all the sides and then glued the paper to the back.  

This is the view from the front.

 We lightly glued the sides together. 

Then we screwed the brace to the sides and the light base to the bottom.

2 hours and a bottle of wine later, this is the finished product.

Here is the other one we made.  Cool how close the paint matches the paper, huh?

Overall review:

It is a cool product.  The options to be able to make it your own and make it match your color schemes was awesome.  It was easy to make, the directions easy to follow.  They are made of pine/soft wood which makes them take paint easily.  One coat was all I needed.  The light bulb is super cool.  It truly does not get hot and I feel completely safe putting this light in the kids' bedrooms.

Complaints:

• The screws were NOT easy to use.  The pre-drilled holes were not quite clean enough for the screws to easily go in.  
• They are pricey.  For more than $30 each, they are not all that considering you need to add your own paint and paper - unless you want unfinished with translucent film.
• The "Free $6 light" is a little misleading.  It's not free.  It's wrapped up in the price.

Compliments:

• You can truly make it match whatever you want given the unfinished wood and zillion paper choices - or by using your own paper.
• Directions are easy to understand.
• Light is bright enough for thinner papers to still give a glow, but not overwhelmingly bright when using translucent film.
• The light is LED - less energy used to use it!  Yay!
• Light truly does not get hot.  Making me feel completely safe putting this in a kid's room and not worry about the paper smoldering.

San Antonio Part 2

While in San Antonio, I took some time to stop at the McNair art museum. It had one of the best collections of art I had ever seen in one location. Picasso, Monet, Manet, Chagal, VanGogh, Renior, Matisse, Berman, O'Keefe, Epstein, and hundreds more. They also had a Nightmare Before Christmas exhibit in the theatre arts area. It was amazing to see the actual pieces and sets used to make the movie!

This is one of the Modigliani pieces - Girl With Blue Eyes.

Picasso - Portrait of Sylvette.

Apparently, Sylvette herself came to the museum to see this picture Picasso painted of her. The original owners of the museum must have loved Picasso, because there was a very large collection of his works.

One of the many Rodin bronze sculptures from the Burghers of Calais.
They were just amazing.  Sculpture is one of my favorite mediums.

San Antonio Part 1

In the fall of 2008, I had the opportunity through work to travel to one of my favorite places in the country to visit...

I was in downtown San Antonio for 4 days for a conference. I was fortunate enough to get a hotel near the Riverwalk and close to so many amazing places to see.
My hotel was about 3 blocks from the entrance to The Alamo. There, I witnessed three wedding parties, one wedding underway, and loads of tourists - like me. I also saw some of the largest trees ever.The entrance really set the mood.

An amazing church steeple near downtown.

The Alamo

Andy Warhol

Back in 2009, I traveled to Milwaukee for a work event and had the pleasure of being able to race over to the Milwaukee Art Museum to see the traveling Andy Warhol exhibit.

These are some of the amazing things I saw:

And here we are in 2012.  

Campbell's released an exclusive line of 4 soup cans for a limited edition that are inspired by Andy Warhol.  I was lucky enough to find 3 of them.  They are proudly on display in my house.  I am still working on finding the right room to be my art-nerd room.  So they sit on a shelf until I find their proper home.

Melted Crayon Paintings

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Pinterest for several things:

1. For giving me a single website with infinite creative resources

2. For giving me a single place to store ideas with visual representations to make my ADD brain happy

3. For sealing my time (lots and lots of time)

4. For making my friends think I am more creative than I actually am 

5. For helping stimulate the economy via me buying all kinds of craft crap that I never find time to touch once it is out of the shopping bag.

My first attempt on a 5x7" canvas.

Lots of people have seen this crayon "painting" on Pinterest.  

I had a dire need for creativity one evening, so I decided to make one.  

The process is pretty basic:

1. Glue [new] crayons to a canvas.  I started small - with a 5 x 7" canvas.  

Then if it sucked, I could stuff it in the trash and no one would be the wiser.

2. Using a heat gun or embossing tool, melt the crayons until they drip.

Lay down lots of paper underneath or you will have one heck of a mess! 

Those who said you "can do this with the sun" are nuts.  I can only imagine that working if you live in the desert and want a puddle of all one color - brown.

3. Let cool a few minutes.

4. Brag to your friends how clever you are.

I found the embossing gun worked better than a heat gun.  The embossing gun was smaller and I had more control. I ended up making 3 total crayon paintings and here are my tips:

• Sort your crayons first!  Lay them out so you know how many your need and try to keep the colors evenly represented. BTW - Crayola - how about some more yellow's!?
• Keep the heat source a bit away from the crayons, they melt pretty easily and you will get a puddle if you're not careful.  Move it closer to melt, then further away as it drips.
• Carefully re-melt any thick spots that may have settled in the middle of the canvas.  
• Tilt the canvas a little to get the colors to run in the patterns you want.
• Try to work one color at a time to keep the true color to the bottom of the canvas.  The colors will mix together as they melt which makes cool new colors, but keeps you from seeing the true colors throughout the canvas.
• Keep your board on a 45 degree angle (or so) to drip.  This will allow the colors to run slowly down.
• In order to fill an 8x10 or 11x14 canvas, you will need to melt the crayon beyond the surface.  To do this, hold the canvas flat on the table, hold the heat gun about 6" away from one color and leave it there a few seconds.  Then tilt your canvas 45 degrees.  This will allow all that melted wax to run down.  
• Alternate areas.  Work on red, then blue, then orange then purple, etc.  This will let one color and area harden a little before re-melting it for another color.  This will also help keep your running colors more pure.  
• I know I said this twice, but it's worth repeating.
• Be aware of your crayon on the sides.  I have several drips down the side and on the bottom.  Be careful it is not on the "wall" side of the canvas or you will have crayon on your wall (and not in the artistic sense).  
• Metallic crayons look pretty, but melt into shades of grey mixed with color.  I tried it (had to do something with all those leftover crayons!) and it is pretty ugly.  It's not very vibrant and mostly muddled.  
• I used Aleene's Turbo Tacky Glue because it's super tacky (obviously) and dries quickly.  I glued them and started melting within minutes.
• Hey - that melting tool?  Yeah, the thing that gets HOT.  Be careful with it.  And the wax.  Yeah, that gets hot too.  Don't let little kids do this.  One more thing - that hot wax - it drips. And that heat gun?  It BLOWS air.  Essentially blowing melted wax.  Use lots of surface coverings!!

 My first large crayon melt painting on an 11x14 canvas.

This and the metallic one below hang in our kids playroom on either side of 

their bulletin board where they hang all their artwork.

Metallic & glitter crayons.  Very muddy. Also an 11x14 canvas.