Something From Nothing

I just got back home from an absolutely wonderful weekend visiting with my parents, sister, and my little nephew Aidan (who is 4 weeks old now).  He is too adorable for words, and he has stolen my heart so completely.  I'm glad to be home though.  I have been travelling for what seems like every weekend this past month.  I'm ready for a weekend at home, and hopefully we will have one of those at the end of this week.

I have finished my latest piece.  I posted a WIP picture of her in my last post, but I thought I'd show some pictures of how she evolved and the sources that inspired me along the way.  I started with the intention to create something beautiful from "nothing".  I really enjoy making art from junk.  There is beauty in the process of altering something of no value and making it something that is beautiful to the eye.  So this piece started with a trip to the salvation army, where I found tons of stuff to use in art for very little money. I used the following youtube videos as a model for technique and for inspiration:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a59mFa-l064

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCPEOGvmYXc

Go check out these videos!  They are great tutorials.

So, here's how it all started:

There's my record from the salvation army, my old friend gel medium, and some really old hoop earrings that were too tarnished/worn out to wear anymore.  They will ultimately be covered up, but they do add great texture.

Here's the next step:

I've covered the whole thing with a couple layers of aluminum foil, and used a stylus tool to bring some of the details to the front.  I love all the texture this has.  :)  Now I'm ready to add some color:

I put down a base of gold with some brushes of hot pink (cuz how can you go wrong with hot pink?).  Then I hit the high parts with some dry brushing of black just to make the texture more prominent.  At this point the base is pretty much done, and I can start on my doll:

Keeping with the theme of making something out of nothing, I used an old cardboard snack box and sketched out a form for my "doll".  I cut it out and applied a base coat of color and inked the edges:

And at this point, since I'm a huge fan of texture, I decided to add some texture to her skirt using egg shells and wood glue:

And at this point I started pulling together the finishing touches.  I formed a face out of polymer clay and a mold.  After baking it in the oven I applied a bit of color with some simple markers.  Then I painted her skirt and applied some paper flowers and leaves.  I also decided that she needed some buttons for her lady parts, lol.  :)  I created her wings with coffee filters, dressed up with some paint and bling.  I also added some paper flowers to the record to integrate her with the background better.  I used some letter tiles to spell out "create" to remind myself that opportunities to create are everywhere.  And as a final step, I glued her to the record with E6000, which is truly awesome stuff.    So here she is, and I called her simply "Something from Nothing":

This same look could probably have been achieved in a much simpler fashion, but I really had a good time trying out new techniques and just simply playing around to see what I could make out of items that would normally just be trash. 

-Joy