Halloween Bad Boy ATC





A Dover royalty free image of a vintage Halloween wizard was the inspiration for my series of Halloween 2015 ATCs. This one was my favorite of the four I made, and will trade with the Yahoo Paper Traders group.

 

The background on the right is from some wrapping paper with Day of the Dead skulls that I received as a gift from a fellow artist. The little boy reminded me of one of those little guys who pretends to be sweet when adults are around, but is really a little terror to all the other kids, so it seemed appropriate to have the skull lurking in the background to really scare him.

 

The orangey, flowered background is a collage I created in Photoshop using Day of the Dead skulls (which are partially hidden) and traditional flowers used for Day of the Dead. On top, I stamped a variety of images using white printmaking paint. The final touch was some scary words that were stamped on using tiny alphabet stamps and a black ink pad.

 

 

Fashionista Day of the Dead

Day of the Dead is fascinating to me. The custom of leaving sweets for the dead, usually sugar skulls, combined with Mexican folk art, flowers and kind of creepy skeletal Halloween images is so unique and compelling.

This year, I made just one piece of art, which I traded with my friend Karen. I was tempted to keep it, but I let go of my inner hoarder and mailed it off, telling myself I can always make another.

I used a fashion figure from a perfume ad in a glossy magazine, added flowers from the Graphics Fairy and some bone pieces, and of course, a sugar skull. I collaged them all onto some paper I had created in Photoshop using my own printed teabags. The finishing touch was to add some brown chalk ink at the edges for an aged look.

Frida Kahlo Santos Style Day of the Dead Paper Dolls

With Halloween and Day of the Dead around the corner, what could be more fun than a Frida Kahlo paper doll, especially with a Santos doll base?

For this fun project, I collected a bunch of vintage Halloween images and searched online for Day of the Dead images. I used a paper doll template (If you do an online search of paper dolls, there are hundreds of resouces.) I adapted a free vintage paper doll bodice, making it thicker in the waist, and using matte medium, covered it with Halloween paper. I cut the arms in half so they could be posed, and made one arm flowered to simulate tattoos.The pieces are joined with mini brads.

For the Santos skirt/bottom, I designed my own using a vintage dress form photo as my inspiration. I drew it on some printed teabags that had been stamped a little, and adhered with matte medium to heavy watercolor paper, then carefully cut it out with an exacto knife.

After some puttering with the elements I wanted to use, and rummaging through my many boxes of papers and pieces, I had the skirt/base, bodice and head ready to assemble.

Here is the almost finished Frida. She looked a little unadorned, especially on the bottom, so I added a bunch of crazy elements: a couple of sugar skulls, a vintage cat, butterflies from washi tape, a chrysanthemum, a matching witch hat and wings. I added dabs of dimensional gold paint to give it some extra pizzaz.

Santos Frida needed words, so on the base, I added some inspirational words that were printed on silk, and trimmed the to fit. Using a black ink pad, I stamped some more inspirational words on the wings.

If you want to get in touch with your inner-child, or want to have some art fun with your very own child or grandchild,  please take a look at the paper dolls on my blog. I have many, many that will surely amuse, and maybe inspire you to play with dolls again.

Day of the Dead ATCs

I have always loved the Day of the Dead artwork. After I did some research on it, I understood the odd combination of religion, culture and art, especially about the meaning of the sugar skulls.

The Day of the Dead theme for October’s heARTist Trading group was pretty far outside my comfort zone, and even after I did a lot of research, I still didn’t know where to begin.

So, I rifled through my boxes and bins and drawers looking for inspiration—which I found in a piece of “scrappy” fabric that I made a while back. It was too brightly colored—garish really—so I tucked it away in the bottom of a box for months. But when I took it out last week, it said “Mexican Fiesta” to me, so I used it as the base of the ATCs.

I auditioned a bunch of other elements, finally settling on a little blue paper sugar skull and some metal crosses that had been in my jewelry components box for ages. The final touch was the “ruby” gems in the eyes, giving it just the right amount of creepy magic.

Frida Kahlo Art Paper Dolls

What a fun theme for the Roses on my Table September paper doll trade--Frida and the Day of the Dead.
I used some Graphic Fairy http://thegraphicsfairy.com/ images for Frida's heart and shoes and for the big flower in her hair, and an assortment of paper and fabric scraps.