A Fun & Frivolous Gift or Craft!

And Happy Friday to you all!

Since I haven't had a whole bunch of time to create my sculptures or detailed pieces lately, I've been dabbling a bit with a fun craft I discovered while in Tennessee earlier this year.

I was in a little gift shop in Franklin, TN, a most adorable place called "Shops on Main" that was just filled with all sorts of really neat craft-type items. Anyway, I saw these little blocks of wood that were painted up so cleverly, and I hadn't seen anything like that before. I loved the simplicity of them and wanted to try my hand at creating something similar. The possibilities really are only limited by what you want to embellish them with. The ones I saw had nothing on them at all, just basically paint, so I "glammed" mine up more and added my own quirky spin to them.

Basically they're just blocks of wood - use whatever kind you want. The one above is a pine 2x4, that I cut and painted. Then I added "stuff". That's the fun part! Just add whatever you want! I did glitters and then added a saying mounted on some scrapbook paper, antiqued it a bit with a wash of ink, popped on a crown that I got from a scrapbook store, and there you go! A simple and easy gift, or craft item ready to go in about 1/2 hour or so.

I did a few of these earlier for Halloween that I just love too!

Think of these for dolling up your desk at work, in a little niche somewhere, in a Halloween vignette, a shelf-topper, on a nightstand, a gift for a girlfriend, as an addition to a gift basket...just so many fun and frivolous uses!

My Queen of Mean - Valentine Hag

It's a bit late to post my contribution to the Valentine swap, but my camera went dead and had to charge the batteries. Sorry for the delay.

Here she is: the Queen of Mean - Valentine Hag. Actually, she doesn't look all that mean to me. She's sort of got an Angelica Houston meets Lily Munster look. LOL!

I totally enjoyed making her. It was a challenge being my first complete papier mache sculpture. I know I can do better as far as the smoothness of the surface texture, but then again, it's sort of interesting to have that much tooth. It was very messy and sticky to work with, but it was easier to get the nice long fingers out of PM then it is clay, and once dry, the surface was easier to paint than clay as well.

I think I'll give it another go with papier mache and try some more pieces. Oh, and the swap was really fun and I will do more of those in the future too.

Queen of Mean - Valentine Hag

I have to say that it's amazing to see a piece without paint and all it's glam and glitter. It goes from nothing to something with just a few dabs of paint. This is certainly the case here - my goodness!

This is my first real piece out of papier mache. I had to enlist the aid of veteran experts Laurie Hardin of Monkey-Cats Studio and David Everett of Chicken Lips for mixing and sculpting tips. Oh what a mess I made. It's way harder than it looks. It's gooky and sticky and dusty and just plain icky! So kudos to the talented duo! I will say this though, after I got going, it was rather fun in a challenging sort of way so maybe they'll be more to come. We'll see if I can master it.


So please meet the "Queen of Mean - a Valentine Hag". This lovely lady is for a Valentine swap with Rabbit Hallow Prims. Once she's painted and dressed in her finery, you can be sure I'll take an "after" picture to post. I can't wait to see her myself!