saraccino: Januar 2017

Dienstag, 31. Januar 2017

Inside her head... there was a whole universe (January AE COM)

Usually I love showing you some pictures of the different creation steps of the "stuff" I create. In between being still ill myself, my husband still recovering from his operation, work, work and more work and my general winter induced low energy levels.... I simply forgot to take pictures.

This time we got a leather cabochon from Lindsay Star for our component of the month (COM) challenge over at Art Elements. If you are curious how she made them, have a look here (I also had to "steal" one of her pictures since I also forgot to take a good picture of the leather cab before I used it).

Don't you think that the all look like little galaxies? The idea of a nightsky was never leaving my mind when I pondered what I should do. Lindsay also send a lot of other little surprised along with the leather cabochon; beads, leather, fabric.... and a little wooden queen (nope, no princess, she has a scepter and the real crown on her head). Although she also reminds me of Alice somehow... maybe the style?

Seeing both together I knew I also wanted to use them together.

My table is always full of other materials and ongoing projects (nobody should visit me without a warning in advance ;)). There was the lid of one of those cheap and ugly little treasure boxes people buy as gift wrappings (to put a gift coupon or something inside). I couldn't get myself to throw them away (had two), instead I opted to take them apart... and let the parts lay around.

But the little queen and the leather cab universe were a perfect fit for the box lid. I added pages from an old book, painted all over the lid, drilled holes in the leather cab (that was scary!), added some glass drops (these were also send by Lindsay, aren't they lovely?), painted over the queen (I wanted to add my own touch and enhance the colours), added a layer of resin on her, cut the the labels from card board.... and finally wrapped and glued all together!

"Inside her head... there was a whole universe"

Please have a look what all the other participants made with the leather cab!

And thank you again Lindsay, I hope you like what I made with your treasures :)

PS: I am sorry that I am late with my blog post... I had troubles with my camera (still have).

Guests:

AE Writers:

Claire (<-- you are here)

Diana

Jenny

Susan

Niky

Samstag, 7. Januar 2017

A little sparkle in winter... (Dragon AE challenge)

The theme challenge for Art Elements this month was as easy as it was difficult for me: Dragons. Those who know me since childhood know of my love for fantasy, for fantastic creature in general and dragons especially. Over the years I created a lot of dragons. Strangely enough they were somehow missing the last few years... uhm... it could nearly be ten years? How did this happen?

So, thank you Niky (who hosts and chose the theme challenge) for giving me my dragons back :)

And speaking of the years gone: I wish you all a happy new year! :)

To be honest, even while I am sculpting from time to time, I was a little bit out of training to create a dragon. Also (now a little bit rambling) my favorite polymer clay brand is not available anymore. Staedtler says it just rebranded Fimo classic to Fimo professional. Let me tell you, I compared them one to one (some of my last ones from the fimo classic with the new ones), and it is not true. Not at all! Fimo professional is softer after conditioning and I hate that.

My absolute favorit polymer clay for creating small details is sculpey super firm. The only drawback is that it comes only in grey. But even though I work a lot with paints and other material to change the surface, I always consider the bacground colour and play with it. I don't like it when my polymer clay is completely painted.

I ordered some new brands and will see how they will work out. I already tested a lot and after all, there are only a limited number of brands with high quality polymer clay.

Back to the topic. I had some of these open bezel pendants left. Normally the silver colour (not real silver) is too bright for my taste but for this project it was okay. I filled it with white polymer clay and stamped it with archival ink (stampin' up) and some letter background. Nope, not a lot of it to be seen anymore but trust me, it would be visible if it was missing. The small details are always creating the whole impression.

There was also another problem as you may see: Winter time! My favorite photo background was covered with snow! In case you wonder, it is the table on our balcony with beautiful weathered wood. On one part stood a plant pot and saved a spot! I would like to claim this was planned... but it was rather a forgotten pot.

But it was cold! We have right now -9°C (about 15,8 Fahrenheit). I miss summer...

There were a lot of tiny pattern on the skin to create the impression of scales. You don't see it anymore since I used some embossing powder for the surface effects.

The structures were antiqued using acrylic paint and acrylic ink (one of the materials I just discovered last year, there was this stuff all my life?) and golden highlights set afterwards again with acrylic paint.