Making Incense

I adore incense and it turns out it is very easy to make. I dont use sticks, I burn incense on charcol discs. This is for two reasons, firstly, the sticks have a binder in them, mastic or gum arabic and its not always a smell that I want to add, secondly burning loose incense in this way makes it very easy to make. All you have to do is use a pestle and mortar to grind the elements of the incense fairly small, 'wet' ingredients such as orange peel, cypress and pine needles, should be dried first (you can do this in a microwave if you are impatient)

As regards amounts to use, start by burning tiny amounts of each ingredient seperately, so you can see what you like the best, then use your intuition to mix them in a proportion to suit your nose. Be careful what you use to support the charcol. I use this little oak leaf pot with a seashell balanced half way down, the air space underneath prevents the pot overheating and cracking. I made this pot at a pottery class years ago when I lived in London. The easiest way to support the burning charcol is to put it on a bit of sand, or use a metal container.

This is a pic of a christmas incense, it has frankincense and myrrh (of course!) some dried orange peel, cloves and cinnamon. I boosted the orange a little with some sweet orange essential oil, but its a nice christmassy smell.

beaker USB key (stick drive) cover

I used to love the muppets as a kid and one of my favourite characters was Beaker. it occurred to me that he would be a great shape for a USB Key.

Tutorial...how to.

1-wrap the USB drive in cling flim (saran wrap)

2- mould a flesh coloured polymer clay around it to cover it to within about 10 mm of the plastic cover.

3- Roll two little balls of white and press on for the eyes, tiny balls of black for the pupils

4- Make a reddish egg shape for the nose and press it gently on

5- cut a diagonal line down for the mouth, go slowly at this point and cut little by little until you are happy.

6-take out the USB key and gently put in some chopsticks, knife handle, something like that to hold open the shape while baking, Bake as directed, Do not overbake or you will discolour it.

7-When it is cool take a fluffy orange feather (or piece of orange yarn, fleece,) and hot glue it on for the hair.

8-Glue in the USB key, Hot glue didnt last very long for this with me, so try E600 glue or epoxy resin (such as araldite)

Mexican kitsch

I love mexican style. I love shrines (as you might have guessed by now!) I love exubrance and bright colours and fun in artwork. I also love dios de los muertos. So I couldnt pass up the recent craftster.org swap on mexican kitsch.

This is what I sent my partner. She requested an altered book. I made this one by starting with a childs board book that had a plastic squeeker toy glued to the back page, I pulled out the toy and used fimo, polymer clay to make a skull, each page was then altered with a different mexican theme, day of the dead, frida, mexican wrestling, religious imagery

I also made her some lucha libre mask paintings, and a virgin of guadalupe bag. The bag is a simple square bottomed tote, with the virgin fabric sewn on. Let me know if you want to see a tutorial for this type of bag, it is very fast to sew up and can be made in a range of sizes.

another shrine

I love boundaries, it makes the creative process so much easier when there are limits, otherwise I spin into a confusion of possibilites, Shrines work really well because of the physical limits of the shape.

This shrine is of foam board, to celebrate the celtic Goddess brigid. I cut the sides, hot glued them together, used a blackand white image from the net, so the shrine was made to fit the image. I coloured in the images and the sides of the shrine.

The equal armed cross is a traditional brigids cross, made from rushes from the garden. I wanted the shrine to look a little unpolished, rough even as i think that the Goddess also lives in the less polished places in life.

bat shrine

This is a fun little shrine that I made. Its in a matchbox, so it is quite small.

To make, paint the inside and outside of the box black (add some glitter if you are obsessed like me!) I used a little moon sticker on the back wall to give depth, I used some hot glue to string a little black thread diagonally across the box, with a little bat sticker (despite my previous posts, I am not against using embellisments, just in moderation)

The metal cross was set in on a slant (I wanted it to look like an old graveyard), it was a charm for jewellery, I simply snipped off the top hanging loop.

musings on creativity

I live in ireland and we have bugger all in the way of craft shops. I am on holidays in Orlando at the moment and so have access to all the wonderful american craft shops and bookshops.

I have been in my element, spent a fortune on fabric!

My two loves are paper arts and sewing, I have been looking at a lot of books, magazines and articles on paper arts and while I hate hate hate the fact that so much of the wonderful papers and embellisments are unavailable to me, I think that on balance its a good thing. So much of what I have seen is very samey, people working with mass produced (not cheap!) embellishments, the work seems to become an assemblage of other peoples elements, I am not saying that its not creative, but maybe there is another step. To work with paint and glue and paper, make your own embellishments, rather than buying a 'set' from someone else.

What is creativity..to me, its about giving yourself permission to screw up, to fail, to create something that might not be perfect. I think everyone is creative. I think what stops us is the fear of failure.

What would you do if you werent afraid to fail.

art shrine, siren song

This shrine a lot lighter, different shape as the space is somewhat less defined than the previous one, and quite different, it is a papier mache fish. I tried to creat a microcosm inside, it contains a shipwreck on the rocks, lured there by siren song, and of course treasure waiting to be discovered. I find that I cannot escape the themes of seduction and womenhood in anything that I do. (I am still waiting for the perfect tiny image or figure of a mermaid for this one.)

The bottom level is the bottom of the sea, with shells and treasure,

the next level up is the surface of the sea, shipwrecked boat and rocks and the ships bell tolling its doom.

the topmost section is bright and has sun bleached coral, (collected from beaches near the great barrier reef) representing air.

this is the whole thing in situ on a blue wall, I wanted it to blend more than standout of the wall.

sock monkeys

I adore sock monkeys as does my daughter, so I had to have a go at making some, these are the boys, one of them is already on the way to the US (charlie), one is hanging around on the ceiling (harry) the other two are currently waiting on new hairdos and will be in my daughters stocking for christmas.