Wednesday 27 February 2019

WOYWW #508: Altered Bottle

Has it really been three weeks since I last blogged? I honestly thought it was only two. The fact that the sequence of WOYWW has jumped to #508 tells me that three weeks have indeed passed without me even noticing!

I'm back today with an altered bottle. I had an uncontrollable urge to alter a bottle last weekend, so I went ahead without a plan or even a firm idea. The problem with that is that mistakes invariably happen, but it's all part of the learning process. The mistake I made - and not for the first time! - was thinking that I can attach flat metal embellishments (filigrees) to the curved surface of the bottle. Nope, yet again I had to accept that this is not possible, even if I shape the embellishments to follow the curve of the bottle - so I had to abandon that idea. Of course, by that time my perfectly gessoed surface was all messed up, so I had to cover it up somehow. Enter cheese cloth - the perfect solution to hide the mess under!

Here's a photo I took during the process. A small champagne bottle, first black gessoed, then decorated with cheese cloth and lace ribbons, painted with turquoise blue and green acrylics for a patina look.


After this, I dripped some sepia ink all over the bottle to make it more weathered-looking and added some pre-made embellishments that were lying around my desk. They were meant for a tag, which never really materialized, so I just used them on my bottle. This is what I ended up with:



I originally made the embellishments for the Tim Holtz Addicts Facebook group  #THA_Feb challenge, which revisits the 12-tag techniques. The technique for February is paint resist and the creation doesn't have to be a tag - it can be anything as long as the focal point or the majority of the products used are by Tim Holtz.

I used the TH tattered butterfly bigz die and the bingo embossing folder. The script on the butterfly was stamped with white gesso and dunked into diluted distress ink (faded jeans and vintage photo) to achieve the resist effect. It worked remarkably well! The effect on the embossed piece was achieved by rolling white gesso with a brayer over the raised areas and then dunking the paper into the same distress ink mixture. It got a bit soggy but dried nicely. 

After I'd finished this project, I came to the realisation that right in the middle there's a big fat, round number of significance: my birthday coming up next week, eeks! How did that happen? I still remember being a teenager like it was yesterday! 

In other news: we visited this charming, little, quintessentially English church nearby and I was quite taken with its tranquil setting and a colourful coat of arms inside that really reminded me of mixed media arts! 





Just one more picture if you have a minute to spare: here's Oreo sporting a mono-brow again. Since I took this photo, it has fallen out as well, so he is now browless for the time being - he does have lots of fine black eyebrow whiskers, but they're not so prominent. It will take a few weeks for the two white ones to grow back - hopefully at the same time! 


Happy Wednesday Everyone! Hope you have a good week! xx

Wednesday 6 February 2019

WOYWW #505: Altered cheese packaging, a win and a rant

OK, so I managed to lose my first paragraph after linking up and I can't be bothered to rewrite it - it was a rant about Google. Maybe they came and deleted it LOL! Anyway, the long and the short of it is that they've finally killed off G+ and all my comments were lost in the process. I was hoping that they would offer a solution to migrate comments to Blogger but they didn't. They don't care. It was easier for them to delete the comments, so now they're all gone. Forever.

In happier news, look what I've got on my desk!


I've won the  January Craft Stamper prize draw! Yay me! This really brightened up my day and made me forget about my Google woes. Also on my desk: a weathered tag in progress, along with some inked butterflies and my general clutter. That iPhone box has been kicking around for months now - I'm planning to alter it one day. My son's got the phone, I've got the box - and it is a darn good box too, very sturdy! 

Onto my project share today, tada! 


Cheese packaging stuck together with masking tape and covered in book paper (although this step wasn't strictly necessary, it made it more sturdy) with pieces of embossed  paper stuck on (made with Tim Holtz embossing folders), gesso and some acrylic ink (Prussian blue and Sepia, if I can remember correctly).  The magic happened when I added some gilding wax on top for highlights. 



What is this, you ask? I don't know... It could be a stand for something or I could just call it an Artist Trading Coin Block - do they exist? They do now! 

Before I go, I'd like to share this idyllic photo of Oreo enjoying a lazy Sunday afternoon by the fire.


My commenting system is supposed to have reverted back to the native Blogger comments - see if it works! Thanks for all the comments over the years - most of which came from the lovely people of WOYWW and some from a handful of faithful followers.  I'm ever so grateful for every single comment and I'm so sorry I couldn't keep them! xx