Carey Burns

Saturday was filled with a lot of paint and glue...I wished it would never end! I did manage to finish a few projects, but even in their current state, part of me wants to keep adding things. First, I made up a few tags just for the heck of it. It is fun to experiment with different products and see if they work. These were created using stamps, paper punches, marker, and metal charms. The background pattern on the red one is achieved using bubble wrap... I used Tim Holtz® Distressed Stains in Mowed Lawn and Picked Raspberry and Ranger®   Archival Ink. The only spiders I like Spooky tree I added some paint and a rust paint to my Handsome Devil and now I'm convinced he is modeled after Anthony Hopkins. Do you see the likeness??? He may be rusted, but he's still dapper! He still needs a dry brushing of white paint, but he is almost done! Hooray!!! I even had a little time to make a very quick/easy pair of earrings and give them away at my Facebook pa...

Since my last posting, I've been a busy girl and somehow managed to come down with a cold/allergy issue over Labor Day weekend. One of my current projects I'm finishing is a Halloween assemblage for our annual Treat-o-Rama at work. Each year we have a big potluck and raffle off donated Halloween items. Hopefully someone wants to win this... For this project I've stamped, stained, glued, and decoupaged my heart out. I even created that one-off, weird honeycomb design on the paper with alcohol ink and bubble wrap. I should finish it tonight or tomorrow and will post photos. Something wicked this way comes...

A little over two weeks ago, my ankle rolled on me just as I was descending a flight of stairs. Eleven steps later, I was crumpled on the floor, laughing. Just my luck. I'm very lucky that I didn't break any bones or have anything more serious happen, just a bunch of deep bruises. (not to mention bruised dignity) As I've been recovering, I've been thinking if this was a metaphorical "push" from fate to get off my ass and finish the things I've started. That's a long, long list of things but I'm up for a challenge. I'm envisioning a lot of late nights and early mornings over the next few months but it will be worth it. I'll be blogging more, mostly as a way to keep myself accountable, but also to share finished projects. First on my list is a statue I've been working on. Here is a sneak peek of my Handsome Devil.

Shortly after Christopher Lee died, Michael DeMeng issued a challenge to create a vampire-themed assemblage piece and of course, I jumped at the chance! If you don't know who Michael DeMeng is, visit his website and behold his creations. Swoon over the details of each delightfully dark piece. Go. Now. I will wait. You're back! Good! I decided to alter a 7Gypsies tray I snagged on sale. I'd have a fake vial of vampire blood, maybe a wooden stake, and a Shrinky Dink rendering of Christopher Lee in all his Dracula glory. A not-so-scary Dracula What do they say about best laid plans? I bought a paper doll book of vampires (really, check it out ) and traced him out onto the Shrinky Dink paper. I colored him in and then popped him in the oven. He did not turn out so well. That scrapped the Shrinky Dink idea. Back to the drawing board. I had bought some buttons at the craft store that had hearts with a blade piercing them. Rust was on my mind so I painte...

Worth more than $1.50 I found a tiny plastic baby doll with wonky eyes at an antique mall. He was only $1.50 and wanted to come home with me so I took pity and bought him. Rusting babies and bones He sat for a while until I decided to add a layer of iron paint and then rust him and I wasn't sure what exactly he'd be. I knew he was going to be on a small wooden block, but he didn't have a story yet. A Changeling is born After gluing him in place and pulling other assorted odds and ends around him, he looked sad and sickly...like he was wasting away...and there in the depths of my brain a memory was sparked. This sad, rusted thing was no child. No. He was a Changeling. The spawn of a fairy swapped for a lovely little boy. I opened my scrapbook containing Other People's Family and found the most perfect match! After taking a photo of the photo, I decided it needed to be in color so I tried my hand at giving him blonde...

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...