Nichos in the Studio
I would love to say that all of my projects, are well thought out... ahead of time!
Some are More than others, but I can't tell you how many times, I have had a basic idea, and the rest just seems to fall into my lap.
My original ideas, for the four nichos that I made last week, were centered around polymer pieces that I made in a Laurie Mika workshop, that I took a while back at Stamp Antonio, in San Antonio.
The pieces were basically "how to" lessons/samplers, for various techniques.
The first "tiles" that I made, for the first nicho below are really exquisite.
Originally, I imagined making a sweater pin out of the two combined, but they proved to be, too large.
I looked, still taped to the plastic sheet in the corner of my studio, where I make my hand painted watercolor paper, and saw one of the sheets that had been hanging finished, for weeks, and thought...hmmm, that would really look great with these tiles.
Yep, I was right about that!
I dug around in my drawer labeled "magic"...because it often produces the most amazing finds...and I found a little broach...that had perfect colors for what was building, before my eyes!
A good while ago, I found some little boxes on sale at Michael's and ...double Yep...a project was shaping up nicely!
I have a system, where I look inside of all of my drawers, until I am sure that I have tried everything that might need to go together, and then I start putting the pieces together.
These bunches of yarn, that I bought from Joni Russell, have proven invaluable to me.
The colors in this one, were perfect!
When it was all said and done, the ladies face, that was created by my accidentally placing a wet polymer clay tile with a transfer on it, onto a paper table cloth, turned out to be the perfect feature for my first nicho! NEVER throw out mistakes!
I made a little "bead" with a feather and glass beads sewn around some strips of my hand painted papers and attached it to some dyed felt.
This picture really shows the beautiful colors on my watercolor paper!
Laurie taught us how to reproduce things in molding putty.
While I am still prone to gluing some ridiculously neat things onto my pieces, it will also be great to make molds of them, so I can reuse my favorite shapes, forever!
I think the finished nicho, is really fun!
Each time, I started with a tile, and the rest of the "parts" are all vintage findings.
The themes were all totally different, one from the other...
which makes it SO MUCH FUN!
This nicho, is surrounded by vintage letters and there is a secret name, embedded, on it!
...hint...her initials are PK ;)
My last nicho, is for the coneheads of the world!
It uses a crazy cute Teesha Moore graphic.
I found this door lock, at an estate sale, recently.
After taking most of the length of the chain off, the loop on the end, landed just like this, while the latch was drying.
I took it as a "sign", that it needed to become her monocle, forever!
SOLD
So, there's a little description of how projects can develop when you give them time!
Yes, its wise, to know where you are headed, but sometimes, its much more fun to let the projects take you there...themselves!
I'll be listing these little nichos on Hastypearl, soon!
There is still time to take advantage of the 10% off sale. I know it doesn't seem like much, but my prices are already pretty lean.
Simply type in 15sales at the end of checkout!
Hope you had a great 4th of July Weekend...
and thanks as always, for reading my posts!
Laura
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