You can definitely see the Mexican influences in this piece.  I found the Mexican lottery cards at a store in San Diego, and knew I had to incorporate them in a shrine somehow.  I tried to catch the cheerful + morbid feel of Dia de los Muertos.  I was going to go so far as to make small ’sugar’ skulls to put in the niches at the bottom, but I found Tinkerbell’s detached leg when we were going through my girls’ toy bins and I thought that would be perfect.  I had to cut grooves in the niche walls to glue it in.

Not shown: drawings on the sides of skeletons dancing in their folk finery.  It didn’t show as well as I had hoped. Acrylic paint, if it’s glossy at all, is resistant to other media over it.  I’m using gesso in another project for collage, and I hope it works better.

To get the blue/green “peeling paint” look, I painted blue underneath, and when it was dried, I smeared vaseline over it and painted the green on top. Then I wiped it off.  That idea came from a book by Claudine Hellmuth.

The beads on the spider are sewn on by hand.  The web was machine-sewed.

For the skull on the inside of the door, I made a stencil and sprayed adhesive. Then I lifted the stencil and poured the pink glass beads over the adhesive.  Quite the mess, I tell you.

The black-and-pink frame around the corazon card is a piece of mat board.  I cut slits in it and wrapped pink cotton twine around it to give the feel of spiderwebs.

For the semicircle/sun at the top, I embossed a sheet of tin.  You can see my mehindi influences in the lotus-petal shape.  Around the outside, I used some leatherworking stamps to add more texture.  When it was done, it had too much of a hat shape and not enough of a sun shape, so I painted some of the tin turquoise.

What I learned from this project: Apple Barrel acrylic paints are cheap because they are poor quality.  For this sort of project, I don’t really need thick tubes of Golden heavy bodied pure pigment artist acrylic, but Apple Barrel is below my threshold for useability.

This is a dish made for a specific recipe, in which you fill the center part with beer, and rest a chicken on top of it.  I like to shove herb-butter under the skin and put seasoned salt on the outside.  It’s quite delicious.  You can also do it with a beer can, but the ceramic dish makes it more sturdy.  I have another one that I use, but I thought if I had a large one I could put potatoes and other vegetables in the basin part.  The glaze got thick and bubbled in parts though, so I’m not sure if it’s ideal for food.

I may have to start over and make another one.  That’s art.

This flowerpot is thrown in Soldate 60.  I wanted to decorate the outside with sprigging of grape leaves, but the sprigg mold didn’t cure in time.  The glaze is “Kurt’s Klear” over “Plume”.  The dimensions are 7 inches in diameter and 4 1/4 inches tall.

I’ve been thinking about ways to use 2-D art in my collage that involves neither stealing others’ art nor drawing.  Because, let’s face it.  I’ve been doing strictly 3-D art for so long that my drawing skills ain’t what they used to be.

I have a scanner and a garden.

I also have Microsoft Photo editor.

This is what I made.

These tea bowls are thrown from coleman’s porcelain. I wanted to make a series of teabowls and then chinapaint surreal images on them.  Unfortunately, I forgot that you shouldn’t throw composite pieces in the summer, as they dry too quickly.  Even painting wax on the joints and wrapping it tightly wasn’t enough to keep the handles from falling off. I don’t mind teabowls instead of teacups, but now they have slight divots where the broken handle took some of the cup body with it when I snapped it off.

Also, the cobalt mixture that works best on bisqueware requires ingredients I don’t own, and I’m incapable of placing an order from Big Ceramics Supply that doesnt involve a hundred dollars’ worth of ceramics supplies.  So my backup plan was to use “Seth’s Black Ink” a thin stain that works like India Ink. I painted the outside of the cups and the top of the saucers with this, and I intend to scratch off parts of it, using the surface of the cup like scratchboard.  I’m not very good at scratchboard art, so this will be good practice.  I’ve done some pieces with this technique before, but that was with slip painted onto greenware, not stain on a bisqued piece.  We’ll see how it goes.