Crusade 21 - Irresistable Wax Rubbings

This month's Green Pepper Press crusade was yet another wonderful use for your rubber stamps, stencils, lace, paper doilies, carved wood, and any other textured surface that you may find around your cottage. I say "cottage" because it's a lot like the process of making brass rubbings that you can make of the brass gravestones in ancient churches in England. You rub a crayon over a textured surface, then paint over it with acrylics. Sounds easy, it is easy!

It's also fun and really brought out my creativity - just like all Michelle Ward's projects. It has been about the only fun in my life this week as I've had a bit of a low patch due to several different health issues that have been very painful and also scary. (Different issues, different pains and scary things) So God Bless Michelle Ward for reminding me that when the "ol' black dog" starts creeping a bit too close, the best thing to do is break out your art supplies.

Here are some of my wax resist samples:

The one on the left was supposed to be a rubber stamp casting - didn't come out well of the stamp, but I loved it anyway. The one on the right is sequin waste - came out perfectly!

The one on the left is a doily rubbing (those paper lacey things that they use as decorative mats in restaurants) and the one on the right is a stencil rubbing. So beautiful - I wish you could see it in real life. It is all gold shimmers and bright teal.

Then, the next question, what to do with them that will honor the process and make them useful? One of my favorite things about altered art is its ability to make beautiful things useful in your life. I've been intending to do "something more interesting" with the cups that hold my paintbrushes for ages. Well, finally I had an idea. See below:

Yes, that's a cup! And yes, that's a wax resist - not one of the ones I showed you, but it's a lace doily impression with a Michael DeMeng Stampers Anonymous stamp over it, and then my doodling and more painting on top of that. Around the back of the cup is a wrap of more of the wax resists. I love this piece! The picture below shows the wrap around the back. It's actually the first rubbing picture that I showed you (the one that didn't come out well, but I liked it anyway).

Here's the almost finished product - I also added a bit of recycled sari ribbon around the top for a finishing touch not seen in this picture.

Oh, one other thing.....in my last post I mentioned that I was thinking about starting up a meetup group for altered artists in the Central Florida area. Having gone into it a bit further, apparently it's quite expensive to start a group through meetup.com. So, (as a starving artist, well, not really, but I just don't have $200 to put towards meetup.com's advertising...) I decided to make my Altered ARTists of Central Florida a Yahoo group, with the hopes that we can find other people obsessed with altered art in the area, and hopefully they'd like to make some art with us (or at least discuss the wondrous properties of Golden Gel Mediums...) To advertise, Cindy and I are wearing shirts to the Stampfest convention this weekend. We'd really like to meet any other altered/collage/assemblage etc. artists in the Central Florida area - surely we can't be the only two in Orlando? So if you're reading this, and you're going to the Stampfest Orlando convention, we'll be there...with shirts on. Well, of course we'll have shirts on, but I mean shirts that say "Altered ARTists of Central Florida".....

Alterered ARTists of Central Fla has three current members - me, my friend Cindy (http://cskawins.blogspot.com), and......MICHAEL DE MENG! This was the only other part of my week that was good, really. Read the previous post's (the one about the Seven Bags of Craft Supplies...) comments and you'll see one from him saying he'd like to be an honorary member!

Also, Michelle - would you like to be an honorary member of our group too?? If you're ever in central Florida, we'd LOVE to see you and make some art. (shameless begging going on here...)

Thank you as always Michelle for your inspiration....