Shrines
Posted in Collage & Assemblage on June 4th, 2011 |
The first time I mentioned making shrines at the office, a whole table full of people looked at me like I had two heads. I love making little pocket-sized shrines in Altoid tins, although I also have some really large ones in the works.
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- The shell of this shrine, and the figure it contains, sat gessoed on my workroom shelf for about a year. One Saturday afternoon, after working in the garden, I came in from the heat, pulled this piece down, and finished it in a few hours. I blame it on heat stroke...
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- An Altoid tin shrine, made with an image from the Thelzeda's Photo Album Image Collection CD from Ten Two Studios. Filled with pieces of fabric, a vial of glitter and a colored pencil.
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- An Altoid tin shrine, made with an image from the Edwardian Image Collection CD from Ten Two Studios. Filled with pieces of fabric, vials of glitter, a skeletal leaf and a key.
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- A small shrine made in a dollhouse-sized cabinet.
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- The interior of the shrine.
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- A small shrine made in a dollhouse-sized cabinet.
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- The interior of the shrine.
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- A small shrine made in a dollhouse-sized cabinet.
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- The interior of the shrine.
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- An Altoid tin shrine, made with images from the Land of the Rising Sun image CD from Ten Two Studios. The tin was burned to remove the printing, then colored with alcohol inks, stamped and embossed, and decorated with dried flowers set in glaze. Inside are papers, a vial of mustard seeds, and pieces of horsetail reed.
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- An Altoid tin shrine, made with images from the Passage to India collage set from Ten Two Studios. Filled with pieces of fabric, paper, a vial of cayenne pepper, beads and jewels.
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- I bought this tall, narrow box at a monthly flea market. I'd had an idea in the back of my head for a while, to do a piece called Binge/Purge, about consuming and disposing. I like doing exteriors that are safe and easy, to contrast with complexity and not so safe content displayed inside. I just painted the exterior of the box black, decoupaged some Chinese text in the center, and glued bamboo chopsticks and a coin in place.
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- The insde of the box is split into two sections. On the left, binge is all about excess. I found an enormous gold serving fork at a thrift store, and had been saving it for this piece. Want ads are the background, a nicely rounded naked woman, a bourbon label, and a beer bottle cap represent the various excesses I had in mind. On the right side is purge, represented by two photos from Hiroshima, big brass bullets, a pile of bones and teeth.
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- This shrine sort of evolved on its own. I found the cracked box, and liked it as is, so I didn't do too much to the exterior---just dabbed the edges and sides with black acrylic, which came out looking a lot like black mold. The front quote is something I said to a coworker who was complaining about having the same headache for two weeks.
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- I really enjoy doing shrines that are completely different inside than they are outside. I carried the black mold inside, and then filled the box with painful things---a broken mirror, tacks, nails, a saw blade, a hornet's nest, needles, broken glasses. The bottle is filled with nuts, bolts and washers, then topped with a doll head that has a clamp screwed into it.
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- I did this nature shrine for Shell in Australia. The outside is a wooden tea box, aged with walnut ink and stamped. Raffia, a twig, and a plastic frog adorn the top.
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- The front of the box slides open to reveal a little magic inside---bottles filled with glitter, lavender and mustard seed, a shell, a glass marble, another plastic frog and a plastic lizard running down the back wall. This shrine is only about 3" tall, so it was a tight squeeze getting everything arranged in the box.
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- A little closer in, so you can see all the goodies.
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- Technically, this isn't a shrine, although it does hold something wonderful. This is a box I created to hold a little fat book made for a friend who was married recently. The members of the art group we belong to did the pages for the book, and I did the binding. Since the page I chose for the cover was made from fabric, I decided that rather than doing a page myself, I'd do a box to protect it.
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- The May shrine in my year-long project was one for Valentine's Day. Not my favorite topic, but since no other guidance was given, I gave it a shot. The red leather box was a markdown at Wal-Mart, leftover from Valentine's day.
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- Like I said, not my favorite subject---I ended up taking a detour to the dark side for the interior.
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- One of the girls in my birthday shrine project got married while the project was running, so when her turn came up, I decided to do a wedding shrine. She posted some really lovely pics of her and her new husband, which I promptly snatched to incorporate into her shrine. The container is a small silver metal cigarette case, with lots of lovely filligree. All I added to the exterior was a little shaker box, made from one of her photos, a watch crystal, and some star sequins.
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- The inside of the shrine used the remaining photos and a small copy of the wedding invitation. I combined these with lace and ribbon, tulle, silk baby's breath, and three tiny little vials filled with stars, rice, and glitter.
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- I had a lot of jumping off points for this shrine---the moon, Mona Lisa, Mary. I threw a bunch of stuff on the outside of the box, in as earthy a palette as I could manage, so there would be a contrast with the interior.
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- Lots of stuff inside, too. Paint, then glitter glue, then polyfil, stamped things, beads, sequins, a laser print of Creation, molded faces, bottles filled with glittery things---if the kitchen sink had been empty, that probably would have gone in here, too.
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- This shrine started out as a metal Hello Kitty pencil box. (No, I'm not kidding.) I painted the exterior with acrylics, sealed, stamped, and glittered.
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- The interior of my little pencil box shrine. Sheet moss, little bottles of naturals, tree bark from y front yard, nuts, and a little clay face. (Yes, that's glue drying underneath those yellow leaves.)
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- This is the front of a Day of the Dead shrine I made for Keren in Israel. The container is an old cigar box that's been drybrushed with yellow and white acrylic, then decorated with a Mexican postcard and some letter stencils.
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- I lined the inside cover of the shrine with a Guatemalan stripe, fringed at the edges. A postcard of Frida Kahlo is surrounded by milagros safety pinned into the fabric, and tied with perl cotton. On the right side, I backed the bottom of the box with orange paste paper, and then cast three skulls using a sugar skull mold. I broke a Mexican tile to do the corners (leftover from my kitchen backsplash), and then added some Spanish text, a Loteria card, and a burnt candle. Oh, and little tiny skull beads all the way around the exterior. The final touch was with some low-temp hot glue---I used it to make strings from all the corners, which is a pretty good fake for cobwebs.
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- Five little matchbox shrines I did for a swap on Nervousness. Each one contains a tiny tuft of batting, a moon face cast in Paperclay, and star beads. The exteriors are stamped and embossed with a silver iris powder, and then the whole thing is dusted inside and out with iris glitter glue.
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- One of a set of three shrines I did for a swap on ABRR. This was originally a little wooden cabinet I bought at Michaels. It's painted with acrylics and ornamented with a face cast from Paper Clay.
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- The inside of the same shrine. I lined the interior with sheet moss, and then added natural items gathered from outside, bags of potpourri, and my kitchen.
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- Another simple wood cabinet painted with acrylics and Lumieres, then stamped with silver ink. The moon face is stamped on silver tissue and applied.
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- Lots of gunk going on in here! Fiberfil cloulds are wrapped with silver floss and dusted with iris glitter. The background of the cabinet is painted with three colors of glitter glue. Silver wire is wrapped and bent and decorated with star beads, and sort of tucked into the clouds. Jars of glitter and glass beads are also tucked in.
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- Another wooden cabinet, painted red and stamped with black Brilliance inks. The design on the door is cardstock that has been gold leafed, and then stamped and embossed with black powder.
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- More gold leaf on the door interior, and all the little Asian knick-knacks I had laying around my workroom.
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- This is a standard matchbox, about 1-1/2 x 2-1/2 inches. I like making little pocket shrines out of these, since it's basically just cover and decorate, with no prep or construction required.
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- I made a set of 10 of these for a swap on the ARTshrines list. Each interior contained a different photo and proverb, and a slightly different arrangement of items.
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- One of the first decos I recieved from Johanna was done in orange, purple and fuschia---colors that she uses often, so this seemed like a natural for her shrine.
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- The interior of a shrine I maid for Johanna for a swap on ARTdecos. The bottles are filled with lavender, mustard seed, and cayenne.
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- Four Altoid tin shrines I made for a swap on the Stampsmith list. These are decorated using the same MJ Hopper stamps, but in different color palettes.
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- Since I'm working on my rubber stamping skills, I wanted to do less 3D embellishment, and more stamping. The foldout pieces seemed to be the solution. Here are the yellow and red versions of my MJ Hopper shrines.
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- The interiors of the black and white MJ Hopper shrines. The lower shrine shows the foldout piece as it looks when the shrine is first opened. The upper shrine shows the piece untied and folded out.
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- The exterior of my nature shrine.
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- A nature shrine I made as a swap on one of the deco lists. I love casting little faces from PaperClay, and these just seemed to be the perfect Mother Nature trio.
