Vintage Glimmers

Clowns Gothic Arch

So this week the theme over at http://gothicarches.wordpress.com/ is clowns. I'm not a fan of clowns.  I used to be.  Before 1986 if I heard the word clown, my mind would associate words like silly and clumsy and fun.  I would think of characters like Clarabelle, Emmett Kelly, Ronald McDonald and Bozo.  But sometime in 1986 I picked up the Steven King book titled "It" and now forevermore, the word clown immediately brings to mind one character - "Pennywise the Dancin' Clown."  I was a huge Steven King fan back in the eighties and nineties.  The characters in his novels always gave me the creeps but the creature he brought to life in this novel and depicted as a sadistic, balloon-wielding clown from under the sewers literally gave me nightmares.  Then a few years later, they filmed a television movie based on the book and me, being a glutton for punishment, just had to watch it didn't I.  Round two of nightmares.  Tim Curry's performance as the nightmarish, demon clown firmly embedded the "Clown equals Scary" synapse connection in my brain.

I'm hoping that in checking out all the other clown-themed arches, I'll start to think of clowns as sweet and silly and just plain fun again. 

Tuesday Again ... Already

It's a mystery to me how fast a week can go by, but here it is Tuesday again.  Making an ATC last week reminded me just how much I love these little cards.  I surfed the web a bit afterwards and found the greatest site for trading ATCs and other artful creations.   I signed myself right up and dove into a swap called Layers, Textures & Glazes.  I worked a bit on them here and there throughout the week in between birthday celebrations and weekend barbecues and finished them up this morning.  It will be so fun to see everyone else's cards for this theme.

ATC Tuesday

That's right.  I've decided that every Tuesday I will make at least one ATC.  Hopefully I'll make more than one each week.  You see I've got one of those 7 Gypsies ATC carousels that's nearly empty and taunts me every time I see it.  I want to start remedying that situation.  My mind's eye pictures it positively ready to explode with little 2.5 by 3.5 inch works of art.  I want it to be so filled with ATCs that I have to post a caution sign warning guests to, "Spin at your own risk - contents under pressure."  But in order to trade them I've got to start making them again.  So here's my first Tuesday ATC.  I used up some of the leftover stuff cluttering up my table from the past couple of days.  A bit of old sheet music, some pieces of a waxy latin dictionary page and my favorite part, a picture of my father when he was a little boy looking like the cat that swallowed the canary.  Let me know if you want to trade!

   

Flourishes Gothic Arch

I'm so proud of myself that I actually created something on a Monday.  That almost never happens.  The theme this week over at the Gothic Arches blog is "Flourishes."  I don't think I'll ever tire of using my favorite flourish stamp.  It just goes so nicely on tons of projects.  For my arch I broke out the beeswax and Perfect Pearls.  Stamping into the warm wax and then brushing on some Perfect Pearls just looks so pretty.  Just be sure to walk away from the stamp for five minutes or so while the wax hardens before you try to lift it off.  Otherwise, if you're impatient like me, you'll end up spending an extra ten minutes cleaning out the wax from the stamp ridges.  Grrrrrrrr!  I also couldn't resist and had to swipe some paint over the top of the stamped flourishes. 

The vintage glimmers on this one?  I braved an allergy attack and opened up the old Latin Dictionary and slathered up a page in beeswax to add to the background.  And the image of the little people; one of my favorite photographs that I use totally too much, my adorable grandmother and her baby brother back in 1908.

Compendious is Such a Cool Word

It sounds so official and important.  It's a word that feels large and all-encompassing to me. Ironic seeing as how it's really just a pompous way of saying brief,  or concise.  But it's perfectly fitting for this beautiful, crumbling old Latin Dictionary I found one afternoon picking through a junque store.  I just love it.  There's no cover, just a title page which reads: A Compendious Dictionary of the Latin Tongue: for the use of Public Seminaries and of Private Students - 1805.  The pages are falling out all over the place and it's perfectly grimy and lovely.  It doesn't even matter that every time I open it, the cells in my body immediately release an army of histamine and leukotrienes. 

I've been using some of the pages that have fallen out completely in collages and they look amazing with resin soaked through them and beeswax absorbed into them.  I'll never use them all, and since I've been sadly neglecting my tiny Etsy shop, I decided to make up a few packages of these yellowed pages along with some old arithmetic workbook pages and a few French Dictionary pages.  It made my heart happy to wrap them up in tissue and some pretty satin & sheet music.

Viva La France Gothic Arch

I'm still not completely unpacked from my recent trip to Hampton, Virginia for the Art & Soul retreat but that's OK because I'm still having fun using all the materials I brought with me and playing around with all the new techniques I learned.  I've just been working straight out of my suitcases.  Today I made this for the current challenge over at Gothic Arches.  The french theme was selected by Frieda Oxenham.  I checked out her blog and was completely amazed by this quilt artist and her beautiful creations.

Thinking about France takes my mind directly to Paris and the Eiffel Tower.  That got me to thinking about making an arch constructed of wire. I was completely inspired by two of the classes I took at A&S and so I used the wire structure technique I learned from Susan Lenart-Kazmer, (an amazing jewelry and mixed-media artist), along with the fabric paper technique I learned from Beryl Taylor, (who is my absolute favorite mixed-media artist).  I learned SO much from these classes and now my head is spinning with ideas. 

   

Can you spot the vintage glimmers in this arch?  Of course there's some old yellowed lace that I can't ever pass up.  Anytime I come across a spool or a little bobbin in a flea market or antique store it just magically attaches to me somehow.  There's also some scraps of a vintage ledger, a French dictionary page, an old French newspaper and handwritten sheet music.