Hello and Welcome to Magpieheaven. Around 2 years ago I took an Artful Gathering class on line with the very inspiring Mary Jane Chadbourne. Named 'The Imaginarium, the anthology of an art doll', the class was a wonderful opportunity to learn all kinds of collage and mixed media techniques while creating free-standing art dolls. Now Mary Jane is running an encore class at Artful Gathering for students who might have missed it the first time around. Inspired by Mary Jane's beautiful wooden kits, I learned to cut my own wood shapes from our children's old bunk beds. Although I'm not on this current class, I wanted to re-visit the doll idea, but this time to explore some animal characters. Here is my first creation in memory of our cat, Daisy who we had to bid farewell earlier this year.
As Mary Jane will be teaching this class, I won't give step by step instructions on how I made an art doll. I would urge you to take one of Mary Jane's classes if you can. I would also like to tell you a little about the cat who inspired this creation. Daisy meant so much to all our family. She was the gentlest of cats, always there to offer us comfort. She was a good listener, the perfect, counsellor - always there for us through good times and tough times . Just stroking that little ginger head and hearing that extra loud purr helped get all our worries into perspective.
And in all the sixteen years we had her, Daisy never harmed a single bird. She would sit in a spot of garden sunlight and listen to birdsong without even a flick of her tail.
Now some might say this was laziness, but we preferred to see Daisy as a peace-loving feline. We reckoned she was the darling of the local bird population.
They certainly flocked happily to the bird-feeders without fear.
Daisy seemed as enchanted by bird-song as we were and she would lie on the grass with her eyes closed in ecstasy. We wondered if she ever dreamed of a world in which cats flew on tiny golden wings.
Daisy's last resting place was in the garden she loved. Both our children had taken the day off work to be there to say 'Goodbye' and as we lowered her tiny body into the earth the birds gathered in the trees around and seemed to be singing her a special hymn.
Thank You so much for stopping by today and taking the time to look at my homage to a beloved pet. I wish you a lovely, creative week.
Hello and Welcome to Magpieheaven. I'm over at Calico Craft Parts Blog today with an altered anchovies tin shrine! If you would like to see how it came together, I'd be delighted if you could join me there.
Have a lovely, creative day.
Hello and Welcome to Magpieheaven! It's ages since I've entered a challenge and this fortnight PaperArtsy have been challenging us to create an assemblage. 3D art has always captured my imagination and the inspirational projects on the blog have been sensational. A couple of summers ago I participated in an on line class with Mary Jane Chadbourne in which she gave an extra tutorial on making ATBs or Artist Trading Blocks. These are really mini assemblages with even more potential than the usual Artist Trading Card. I'd never got round to utilising the little blocks of MDF included in the kit that went with the course so I decided to give myself a treat and create a mini assemblage. I'd like to link up what I have created to the current PA Challenge, which you can learn all about here.
This challenge continues in a similar vein to the previous 'Found Objects' theme, which I never got round to entering! Never mind - there were some 'Found Objects' on this project including part of an old earring, a cylindrical Polymer clay bead from an old pendant and a couple of wooden beads.
I have been using some drawings of animals, digitally reduced and given different bodies, on miniature houses, pegs etc, but for this project I decided to allow those faces to take 'centre stage'. This little cat was given a summery party hat from some floral design paper with a Dresden embellishment. The background is some tissue with text on it, gifted to me by a friend I met in an online crafting class. I have a supply of books from library sales and the text at the top was taken from one of these.
One of the first things I did with the block was to paint it with PaperArtsy Fresco Finish paint in Turquoise. This set the tone for the whole assemblage, which evolved to have a Night and Day/Summer and Autumn theme. PaperArtsy produce a great Crackle Glaze, but for this project I particularly wanted a glaze that would produce tiny cracks so I went for a one-step crackle by DecoArt.
It took me a while to discover how to get the best results with this product. Then about a year ago, after several failed attempts, a class-mate on a course suggested using a desk fan while the glaze was drying and it's worked a treat ever since!
Miss Flora, the kitten, faces each day wide-eyed and ready to discover all that blue skies and sunshine have to offer.
Miss Ava, the owl, on the other hand, awakens to moonlight. She resides in the ancient oak tree and especially loves the autumn when the acorns collect around the roots of her home.
She's on good terms with the Magpies who sometimes leave their calling cards in the form of a single feather outside her door while she sleeps.
A dear friend of my daughter who now lives in Australia once told us that she feels owls can see into our souls so I thought this Tim Holtz word band was appropriate! I decided to give this little assemblage to my daughter and her partner as 'Welcome to your New Home' project. Their flat is on the first floor of a Victorian house and they look out onto trees with a lively community of squirrels, woodpeckers, blackbirds and chattering magpies. I do hope their kitten, Roxie doesn't ruffle any feathers in this community!
It was such fun using scraps I found in the studio for this project. The tissue with an acorn design was from some packaging, and you can probably see that I used some doilies on the piece too.
Thank You so much for stopping by Magpieheaven today. I do hope you'll have a go at creating an assemblage too because they are so much fun to create.
Hello and Welcome to Magpieheaven. Today I'm over at Calico Craft Parts - one of my favourite places to be - with a little hinged house! Please pop over if you have the time!
And find out what lies behind the door of dreams!
Hello and Welcome to Magpieheaven! Have you ever found something at the back of your craft cupboard and been inspired to play? It might be a little box to alter or a collection of embellishments you had forgotten. In my case it was some plain, wooden memo pegs. I had so much fun creating 'art dolls' from these a couple of years ago - using techniques I had learned from a class with Mary Jane Chadbourne a couple of summers ago. They were great to swap and to give as little gifts. When I recently moved everything upstairs to my new craft room, I found I had some pegs left unaltered. As I've been playing with new animal characters, I decided to bring them to life on these substrates.
My theme is 'The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea...' Although I do recall the Owl in the poem was male and the Pussycat female, my owls are Elizabethan ladies and instead of an 'Elegant Fowl' I have a rather courtly cat who made an appearance here not so long ago. I've used my own art work, that of classic Old Masters, design papers, fragments of tissue napkin, bits of old maps, Dresden trim and even a little stamping on the pegs along with broken jewellery bits.
I wonder if these sophisticated owls and pussycats have travelled to faraway lands, or if they've merely dreamed of doing so?
Here you can see what the giant peg looks like before it's decorated. You might notice that I've given it a light sanding.
When I first made these pegs a couple of years back, I was afraid to remove the metal spring, but this time I took the plunge and it was so much easier to be able to paint, decorate and stamp the individual pieces. The spring was not too difficult to replace either.
I wanted to create the impression of aged wood and I chose colours that I hoped would evoke the oceans traversed by my intrepid animal travellers - real or imaginary!
Once my pegs were painted I could add collage to them.
I keep different sized scanned, cut-out pieces of my art work, scraps of napkin and papers in little containers on my desk and play around with them. It's great to have bits and bobs stored close at hand now that I have a craft room. I can just grab my water-colour pencils, markers or paints and enhance an image without having to rummage for hours through cupboards.
These Dresden suns were just a little too large so I replaced them with smaller ones with tiny gems taken from broken jewellery at the centre.
This courtly young cat will be travelling through the post soon as a gift for a friend. I wonder if he's dreaming of his new home? At least his 'Love' is on the reverse side of the peg, so they will not be separated!
This fine galleon is a detail from some map wrapping paper produced by 'The British Library'. I scan the maps and then print them out, so that I still have the originals.
Thank You so much for stopping by today to see what I've been up to. I do hope that you're having a creative week of adventures like my little characters, whether you're at home and dreaming of your holidays or on your travels!
