Show Your Face on Friday - Timeless Story

Hello and Welcome to Magpieheaven! This week I'm linking up with Kim Dellow's wonderful 'Show Your Face on Friday' blog. For the whole of this month the theme is 'Different Head Positions' and this great topic was suggested by June Walker. I'm beginning with two faces looking straight out from a tiny diptych I created. I wanted them to look intent on telling a timeless story, leading us into the house of Imagination.
 I had 2 houses, which I had cut from pine, measuring 4" x 2.5". June asked me a while back if I ever tried joining houses with hinges and for this project I set myself the task of doing just that. I bought some tiny dolls' house hinges on Ebay, stuck them in position and then drilled little holes for the screws to hold them firmly in place.

I collaged the two heads, which are my own art work onto the bodies from French Vintage playing cards. Both heads look straight at the viewer, but the one on the left appears, to me, to be turning to look in our direction, while the Queen of Hearts on the right offers us a rose. They invite us in to listen to fairy tales of timeless magic.

What I love about collage is that I can position my own hand-drawn heads on bodies posed at various angles to create a slightly different effect. When I did the Imaginarium doll making class with Mary Jane Chadbourne a couple of summers ago, we learned that tilting a collaged head can create a completely different look for a character to positioning it straight.

I've also been playing around with ways of creating tiny doors. I recently bought  a sheet of PaperArtsy Hotpicks Stamps with 3 beautiful little doors. I stamped these onto the back of some copper foil, placed this on a mouse-mat and then went over the design with a pencil to give a 3D effect. I then painted the foil, allowed it to dry a little and used a nail file to scrape away some of the paint; buff and polish the doors. A jewellery finding and a fragment of wood for a step were the finishing touches.

The peacock tissue on the interior was given to me in a napkin swap from Dee Ryder Meade. Perhaps the 'Timeless Story' the 2 little characters with their steady gaze have to share is one from Scheherazade's '1,001 Arabian Nights'. Who knows, maybe the beautiful peacock is an enchanted princess who was so proud she offended a wizard and was put under a spell, only assuming her human shape at night. What happened to her eventually only the storytellers, or our own imaginations can reveal.

 Turning the Diptych around we see a galleon on a story-telling voyage of discovery. This is a scan of a map from the British Library's collection. I bought a pack of these maps last Christmas. They are marketed as wrapping paper, but the quality of the printing and paper make them far superior to ordinary wrap. The map paper at the foot of the Diptych is from a paper napkin and the tiny robins and their branches are from Calico Craft Parts.

If we focus on a detail, we can see that the galleon has a guardian angel leading the ship safely through stormy seas.

And here is a close-up of the little copper foil roof. It was so much fun creating this tiny hinged house/diptych. It was not too difficult fixing the miniature dolls' house hinge and I really would like to experiment some more with different head positions on the figures for future projects. Thank You so much for stopping by today to look at my Timeless Storytellers. Have a lovely creative weekend.