Chunkies O' Love

I have the most wonderful group of friends that live at the corner of sketchbook and divine!  Every month we make themed chunkie pages for an ongoing swap.  The swap started back in October of 2011 and we are almost at our 1 year anniversary.  For anyone who is ga-ga over tactile art (those who have to touch it, squeeze it, kiss it, hold it next to their faces and whisper sweet nothings to it in the corners of darkend rooms) this is as good as that dreamy part of the morning when you sleep in late and wake up to the deathly quiet dust motes dancing up and down a sun beam shining in through the window.  It's beyond divine.  All my dear friends sit down each month and truely do their best work to give away.  To give to me.  I love each of these women with wild abandon, consider them my dearest friends.... and yet all I have ever met of them is their art.  How incredibly wonderful is that?  Is that not truly the stuff that feeds our souls?!

This month's theme was Wine Women and Song... or as I like to call it..

Booze, Broads & Bellowing!

I spent the better part of a day stumped, pouring over tons of old photo's, googling "wild women" (note to self:  You might want to rethink a google like that next time when you have a 9 year old looking over your shoulder! Rut Roh!!! Dang nearly slapped the poor girl in the face flinging my hands over her eyes!).  And then I saw this photo....and well, one thing led to another... sometimes it just happens like that and we can't stop ourselves!

A Few Things Along the Way

Just a few things I've been working on lately :-) 

This is a Teesha Moore inspired piece.  I am just mad and wild in love with her work!

This is a fairy house I made for a swap using a 4-6" wooden bird house.  I called it "laundry day".

Close up of the house.  Modeling paste mortar to hold in murano glass beads.

Another altered cabinet card.  This one a vintage theme for a swap.

Yes, I know, ANOTHER altered cabinet card.  Halloween theme for a swap.

This is an altered book/journal I've been working on for a swap.  The theme was to take a work of EA Poe and use it to inspire your book/journal.  I chose The Tell-Tale Heart.  For those not familiar with the story it is a mad man who lives with a kindly old man who he loves, but has a "vulture eye", pale blue and clouded that drives the crazy man mad.  He plots to kill the man and rid himself of the eye.  He creeps into the old mans bedchamber for nights on end to no avail since he never finds the eye open.  Finally one night he does and he kills the man.  He then thinks he cleaverly cleans up the scene and he cuts the man into pieces and hides them under the floorboards.  The next day he is visited by the police who say the neighbors reported a scream the night before.  The crazy man is so confident of his murdering skills that he has the police sit for tea right above the body parts.  The mad man starts to hear a heartbeat which gets louder and faster.  The mad man is sure everyone can hear it and he jumps up and confesses to the murder and tells them to look in the floor for the proof.

I found an old book of Poe's works and used it as my base.  I cut a circle from the center so an eye from an interior page could be seen.  I also cut out the title hole at the top.  I stenciled the cover with modeling paste and a birch tree stencil.  Covered it with stained gauze.  The binding has ribbons with bit and pieces tied to them.

The inside cover.

A few creepy eye zentangle tags tied in with ribbons and beads.

An old tin type tied to a ribbon for a bookmark.  The left page was stamped and then covered with stained tissue paper.

This page has a picture of a heart.  Underneath the heart I have secreted one of those recordable greeting card modules.  Bob and I spent an hour in the bathroom (quietest room in the house) getting the recording just right.  When you turn the page to this page the thump-thump of a heartbeat plays for about 15 seconds.

At the end of the book I glued several pages together and cut some drawer holes in them.  I covered the top with floorboard paper.

Inside the drawers you find..... you guessed it!  Body parts!

The back cover.

Hope you enjoyed a little bit of my wacky weird art world!