I was never good at "crafts" or so I thought. I define crafts as anything that is basically not a painting or traditional sculpture. That was an elitist ideal I admit, and one entertained by most fine artists still.
Not that I turned up my nose or saw them as lesser artists, just something I thought I'd A) not have the skill/patience/ intertest in pursuing and B) Have the time! My family were crafty people. They crochted, sewed, made little decrorative and useful items all of the time. The kind you see at arts and crafts fairs. The kind of things now completely permeating the new market place of the internet; such as Etsy, Ebay and Pinterest and YouTube.
Remember the days for us artists , when we wanted instruction that didn't include paid for schooling we relied on video tape intructions one could order from any art catalogue or wait eagerly for your local PBS station to show Bob Ross' show "Joy of Painting" and his happy clouds or one of my personal faves,
Helen Van Wyk who hosted "Welcome to my studio" .
Now ANYthing can be learned on YouTube in the arts and crafts genre. Very inventive and fun things too! That leads me to the photos and the title of this post. I live with a very talented crafter and artist. She is obsessed ( I mean this pretty literally) with beads, wire and glitter. More so, she has opened up my pre mentioned slightly art snobby eyes to her world. One day she eagerly sat me down in front of the computer to show off her newest finding on YouTube. What things you can do with Aleene's Tacky Glue .
It seems, when Aleene was testing to see if it was flammable or not, she discovered a nifty thing and this was revealed to us with a squirrel like excitement how cool it was!. On any surface, but they used a paper bag cut out in a preferred shape, smear the glue on thickly. Have a high flamed candle and run the glue coated surface along the tip of the flame to make it soot black. ( have the item on something like s stick, wire, etc so your fingers aren't near the flame and all the surface can be heated ) Leave it a bit longer in some spots and let it bubble up like some mad scientist experiment! You can then carefully push the still soft but sooted/burnt glue around to make patterns. When it is dried more, gently rub off the soot and a smooth, volcanic glass like substance is left behind. On top of that rub in metalic paint. paste..paint..etc..and it adheres to the ridges and glosses over the smoother spots.
Then Viola! You have faux metal.
As you can see on the examples I did above it looks pretty nifty eh? Those were done on cut out corrugated cardboard. I smeared some gold and silver dust used in my clays, then spots of paint. The larger heart had coloured 24 gauge wire glued to it underneath and I simply scratched off some of the dried glue over top to reveal the red wire underneath.
You can imagine the limitless possibilities. This can be done on wood, paper, plastic..anything. The glue protects the surface underneath and you don't hold it over the candle stationary. Look up the idea on YouTube or on Aleene's site for tutorials.
The larger photo are the hearts taken under an incandescant light and the second is under a full spectrum light.
So, now I am using this glue thingy technique on EVERYTHING...and thinking of the possibilities of how to embellish ATC/ACEOs, paintings, cards, gift boxes..etc.
THIS..is what one gets when they live with a crafter! Thank the gods...
PAX