Color & Texture in Chrisy's AB

This is an altered book belonging to my friend and cohort Christy...we are involved in a Round Robin on ICE Yahoo Group and we are in the last month of the RR... This pic of the entire book.
It is awesome.

This spread was made with Perfect Paper..then I added a large embellished butterfly on the left and a small metal butterfly on the right page (she really like butterflies) then I added some large sequin garland on the right hand edge. I used Golden Glaze for the color and added a sheet of cellophane that had silver stars(it came from a 1924 Central State University year book that I found in an antique store in Palestine, Texas...how cool is that?)

This is the second spread that I did and it has Golden Gazes for the back ground color, then some foam triangles that I cut out with some scalloped scissors and wrote on with gel pens. Then I sewed some beaded garland that I got at World Bazaar in San Jose California, they were having an after Christmas 90% of sale...love it...then I added some beaded fringe at the bottom.

This is the third and final spread for Christy's book...what I did here is I used some paper that I altered by using strips of an old magazine that I tore up and glued down to some water color paper, then I added strips of masking tape (3/4") and some glue dribbling for texture. After the glue was dry I did some washes of blue and yellow allowing them to blend in the middle, hence the green area, I stamped some swirlies on it and then just glued the page into the book. Then I added some alphabet beads to say "color" and "texture" and some little rhinestone embellished

cross beads. Then I glued down some sequin and furry trim and added some little tiny safety pins that had purple heads to the trim...I hope Christy likes how it turned out...

Three Finished Catalogs, Killed by Me

These are the three Catalogs that I have killed so far..you may have seen in previous posts how these catalogs looked after I soaked them in the bath tub and then how they look after they were scrunched and smashed and then dried...I really am amazed how they turned out...each one is so different. I just started adding some paint, some glazes and some stamping...then I added some fibers and some clay pieces that I had made and painted....these were quite a stretch for me, I usually lean more to the realistic side of art...but when I finished I was pleasently surprised. I am thinking about putting them on my Etsy shop. This one has a lot of beads and pages that I rolled up while they were wet and let dry. It could be hung on the wall or place on an easel for display. I gessoed the back of this one but I left a lot of the printed material in the catalog show through the glazes...The green pearlized leaves are some pins that are like corsage pins that I got from Lisa at Collage Stuff. I just pushed the pins into the back of some of the rolled up pages. There is a little frame that was made by cutting a small square in the paper before it was dry. There is a piece of lace that I put on diagonally to create a little more texture and then the beads are from a store called World Bazar in San Jose.
You know after Christmas sales are awesome, you can get some really cool stuff at 90% off.

I call this one "I See You" because I found some "googly eyes" that are funky colors and they just happened to match the colors I was using...funny how that happens some times....I probably had these things for 20 years and I just knew I would use them someday...well this was the day...lol. This is the catalog that had some blue & yellow Easter egg dye on it, so I built on those colors...well you know how much I love my Golden Glazes and the burgandy is my favorite so I add some of that...then I wiped it with a rag while it was still wet...then I used some permanent markers to do some doodle thingys. I have about 2 million buttons so I went through them and found 3 green ones and I sewed those on to the center. When I started to do the doodles I began to see triangles and so I followed the folds of the paper and accented those triangles with a purple marker. This idea of the Catalog Killing came from a UK artist by the name of Maggie Grey...if you google her you can find a lot more of her awesome work.

Any way, there are more "unsolicited" cataloges being soaked, or dryed or squished as we speak, some other artists and I are going to do a collaboration using this media, it will be fun to see how different our styles will be when we finish....we will post the results some time at the end of the summer...hope you enjoyed clicking on these so you can see them bigger.

I Wish I Was 18 Again

Click here to view this video

This is a video from my 50 year class reunion that was held last month in Fort Worth Texas. It is really cool...what great memories.

Garage Sale Finds-The pickin's were good!

Yes you are right! These are very old "Roller Skates"...most likely from the 40's. But this is the awesome part...(of course you know me everything has a little story to it)
I found these skates at the same garage sale that I found the little porcelain dolls below, and it was what I thought to be my last stop, and I only had enough money for the dolls, so I talked to the lady and told her I was a mixed media artist and I made all kinds of things out of old "stuff" (understatement). She asked if I saw the old skates?
(9 of them to be exact) so I went and looked at them, and ask how much she wanted for them, and she said "Oh $1 I guess". I told her that I had given her the last of my money for the dolls. Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather when she said why don't you just take them and make them into something, and she went and got a brown grocery sack and loaded all (9) of them up and gave them to me...well let me tell you tears came into my eyes and I hugged her and gave her my blog addy so she could visit her "skates" when they got made into an art piece...(inspired by Michael De Meng of course) You know this ole' world is all about communication (and money of course but that is another story)...I can't wait to get started with these skates.
I really have a great affection for these kind of skates because when I was about 4 or 5 years old my daddy made me the best scooter ever, he used a skate (like these) and an apple crate. It was awesome. I spent hours gliding down the street in front of our house in Wichita Falls Texas, until one day the Milk Man was delivering milk to our house (that was in 1946 when you could still get your milk delivered to your door) and I was coming down the hill pretty fast (at least it was fast to a 5 yr old...lol) and I could not stop and ran into the HUGE bummer of the milk truck...and yes it knocked me out and I saw stars and birdies flying around my head. When I woke up I was in my bed with an ice pack on my recently acquired "pop knot"...and bandages on both my knees and elbows...but let me tell you that is not what I think of when I remember all of this...what I remember was the terrific scooter that my daddy made me.

These are all of the skates. They are fantastic...can't wait to use them.


These are tiny little bisque fired porcelain dolls (sorry for the blurry) I am going to make jewelry out of them, and the good part is I only paid $3 for them, I am here to tell you that I wouldn't have poured and cleaned them for $3. My friend Ingrid makes these kind of dolls all the time and I don't know how she does it. They are so tiny and precious...I photographed them in the palm of my hand so you could see how small they are.


Below are some other great finds (eat your heart out Michael De Ming,,,lol) I had set my self a $20 limit for my Garage Sale shopping spree...and I spent $22...opps...because I found a printer (brand new Lemarx) for $3 dollars.

What we have above is a big bag of buttons for .50 and below some really cool stuff including a gauge, a really old (old enough to be called antique, which is older than me...lol) light off of a Singer sewing machine, a metal flower, some wire, a grater and something that looks like an insulator but I am sure it is some kind of attachment for an electric juicer...OMG...how cool is that? That white thing with the gold brads is a bracelet...OK...the possibilities are endless here....what fun.