Wild Animal Chunky

I have made another chunky for a swap on UK Scrappers, this time on a wild animal theme;  her favourites are giraffes and meercats so I went for an exotic animal style, with a couple of handcrafted items from Africa  (the zebra and the fabric panel on the back)

Tinchie swap - the Road Trip

The latest swap I have been involved in on UK Scrappers is a tinchie swap; this involves altering a mini mint tin to a designated theme and sending it to your swappee.  Mine was for Rebecca, and she wanted the theme Road Trip.  Unfortunately I got a bit confused what I was doing and started making a tin on a completely different theme entirely, which wasted two weeks.  As a result, I didn't have much time to plan and carry out the alteration so it had to be done using stuff I had to hand or could find locally.  I hope Rebecca is not too disappointed by the end result.

Box Frame Shrine

A couple of months ago I picked up a double box frame from a charity shop, and have been trying to decide what to do with it ever since.  I decided last weekend that it would make an ideal shrine, and what better time to make it than over Beltane?

It was already painted a weathered white, which I quite liked for the outer part which would represent the Maiden.  I removed the plastic flowers and twigs that were glued in, stood it on it's end and started painting it.  The lower recess was painted red to represent the Mother, and to house a battery tealight to which I had glued an acetate strip printed with one of my favourite images. This is of an amazing wall mural of a Red Goddess.

The top recess was painted in black to represent the crone.  (As you can see the red and black are only roughly painted; this is because I intend to line the recesses with other images, stones, shells etc as I find suitable ones)  At this point I realised that I didn't have a figure suitable to sit within the recess - I have a few moulded and mini versions in stone of the Venus of Willendorf but they were too big or too small.  I ended up buying a block of black fimo, to which I added a small amount of white and red which can't be seen. This was moulded very roughly, as I wanted her to have an ancient and prehistoric feel and look.  Once she was baked I washed her in water from Chalice well in Glastonbury.

I added a moulded white fimo face to the frame section, and printed out  a poem in red, white and black which I cut and added around the outside of the frame and each recess.  To make the frame stand, I glued two old cotton reels at the back, these were from a box of cottons given to me after my grandmother died, so I am very please that something of hers has gone into the making of this shrine.

The shrine was finished as it is now on Beltane, and dedicated that evening; however it is still a work in progress!

Alice themed ATC's

Over on UK Scrappers, I have joined a select group of creative nutters, and we are starting on a round of swaps within the group.  The first of these is a set of ATCs based on Alice in Wonderland, for which we each selected a theme or character and made a set of 14 the same so that each person taking part has one from everyone else.  These ATCs are being collected together by a very dedicated lady called Rebecca, who will make each set up into a little book and send them back to us.  I decided to do the caterpillar, and they have already gone on their travels.  I forgot to get a photo of them all together, but here is a picture of them in their box getting ready to go:

And here is a close up of a single one:

I got a bit stuck trying to figure out how to make a hookah pipe as you can see!

Artist's Tools

I was getting messy with glue and paint earlier in the week, and asked my son to wash the paintbrushes for me while I was busy (and then my scissors after I spilled PVA glue everywhere!)  When I went into the kitchen later, this is what I found:

He's not normally neat and tidy, so it tickled me the way he had washed them and carefully laid them out, like a surgeon's tools!