Show and Tell

A little update on my mad scientist projects. A couple of days ago I decided to turn some old nut containers and a pepperidge farms cookie tin into storage for some of my supplies. They weren't pretty though so I decided to alter them.

My ideas for altering a tin:
Collage with old book pages
Wrap with fabric
Spray paint
Cover with fabric strips

I finally opted to go for the spray paint because I wanted cream and I also wanted to try using the paint on one of my little sculptures.

I sprayed the little container with a primer first and that really gave it a nice hide when I sprayed the second coat. The larger one I just went for it and sprayed and you can see in the photo that to get the same coverage I'd have to do a few more coats. But I kind of like the way you can see the image of the water that was on the tin showing through so I think I'll keep that one as is. The little flower needs a bit of sanding and roughing up but I think it'll look nice.

Once I had that basic cream coat I decided to try out my new "pool" paint dabber from Tim Holtz's line with Ranger. Love the blue green color. I dabbed then twisted to get the polka dot effect. That still looked a little rough so I went around each dab with a brown watercolor pencil. To finish I tied a couple of fabric strips around the middle of the tin and then topped that off with a little stacked button embellishment.

Then yesterday I took a trip to Dick Blick and spent my birthday money on some basic Golden acrylic colors, a few brushes, and a 12" x 36" canvas. I got a little carried away and it's all I worked on last night after Jasper went to bed. The pot is too big I think and needs more dimension. I was going for an Odilon Redon color for it. :) I also want to add another color to the leaves for interest. Actually, although I like this a lot and it was fun to paint, I think I'll try it all over again next week and make it a mixed media piece. Some fabric, wire words, stitching, old paper scraps, pencil......