Sister Visit and a little Creativity

Carl and Cutter were so happy. Their "auntie" was here all week and they love her.

Carl had to share "his spot" on the sofa...

And he would look at me, as if to say, "I love that she visits but it's hard to share my spot."

 He wouldn't budge from his side of the sofa

until Sis offered him a Cheetos and then everything  was OK.

We had a wonderful week. We went into Sutter Creek and Amador City, spending time in our favorite stores, talking to some friends and finding some "goodies" that we couldn't live without.

But, mostly, we made art. 

Remember the bottle art that we made the last time she was here?   This was a little Watkin's vanilla bottle that I created a few months ago.

Last week we went to bigger bottles and got crazy.

This was mine. It's not finished, but I love the "steam punk" look to it.

This is an old soda bottle. I Mod Podged some old dictionary pages onto it, let it dry and then sanded it off. The ridges of the bottle really stand out. Then I antiqued the paper with some walnut ink, using my finger and rubbing it in.

The metal piece over the top is an old biscuit cutter I found in an antique store.

The legs are the bottom half of a plastic skeleton and the wings are a cheap metal butterfly.
The "face" is a rusty pipe connector with a bit of screen covering the end.

There is a woman's face inside, behind the screen. (Just some clip art I found.)

The rest is for your imagination. Symbolism is a big part of this kind of art. It's unique to the artist and has lots of ambiguity.

Sis has taken classes from an artist that really takes this art form to a different level. His name is Micheal deMeng and I will be taking one of his classes in September at the Art Is You retreat in Petaluma, CA. His work is very dark and filled with ambiguous interpretation.
Sis is braver than I and she is not afraid to stretch the boundaries of her imagination.
This bottle was transformed with paper, a beautiful, old drawer handle, a plastic doll face and trinkets from my sister's collection of ephemera.

She found some gold cloth wings in my junk drawer collection and covered them with scraps of cool black and white paper. She also backed the bottle with the same paper so it could be seen from the front, through the bottle.

 The bottom piece was a gear and a faucet handle with a small piece of faceted glass over the top and some burlap type material connecting all of it.

 The face has a bee over the mouth. (Talk about symbolism.) Then she painted and antiqued all of it.

 I love the look of this bottle. It's elegant yet shabby... or, as a friend of mine would say, "Gentile poverty"... and a lot of imagination.

We had so much fun with this. Just take an old bottle (it doesn't have to be a good antique) and just start adding stuff to it. Use glue, Mod Podge, glue guns. epoxy and spit. Anything will do... but most of all use your imagination.
We spent one whole day doing this. Cheap fun and very creative.


The Corgi boys miss her.  So do I.

Carl is still wondering where she went.

"She will be back boy, don't worry."