Carey Burns

Yesterday, I put the finishing touches on my Vlad Tepes Shrine. I cannot begin to count the hours it took to create this thing or the number of times something didn't quite work out right or look right. After these photos, I ended up lowering the "dinner scene" so that it was more centered on that bloody field of red. I first started this piece with the red background and knew I was aiming at making a vampire shrine because, well, I have a thing for vampires. After staring at an image of Vlad Tepes in his iconic crown, I knew I wanted to try to recreate it. The crown is a piece of wood with glass pearls, a heat-treated bronze star, and a rhinestone "ruby." I used a special clay to mount the pearls and painted a metallic gray layer over the clay, adding black paint with a dry brush to make it "grungy" before mounting the bronze piece. I created the bloody pikes by cutting down wooden dowel rods and running one end through an electric pencil s...

I've been working on a lot of big projects for work and when I get "me" time I feel like a zombie and the words just don't want to flow like they used to. I'm sure it'll all get groovy again for me, but in the meantime, I've been crafting up a storm. My house looks like a tag sale blew up in it and I think at last count I had four projects in various stages of completion. The Changeling is waiting... As I painted an altered frame today during my lunch break, I wasn't sure what it would be for. I knew I had a greenish-brown, mucky background, but that was it. My mind wandered and then I knew what it would be. And then I had an idea for one of the other projects I have started. Each one was its own story, its own pieces to form a whole. The words haven't really left me, right now I'm just showing and not telling. In my nearly-done Vlad Tepes piece, the Changeling piece that is screaming to have a chance, my Dapper Devil statue, and this...