Travelling Pegs!

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!