From A to Z

Ever since Graphic 45 came out with their Typography paper line I knew I wanted to try to make 3-D alphabet letters. So here is what I came up with... the letter "a" and the letter "z".

Each letter is 6 inches by 6 inches, and 2 inches thick.

They are completely made out of chipboard and are hollow inside.



Here are some close-ups....

The "a"

and the "z"

The camera angle is a little odd on this one - it really is pretty square.

A Fairy Subdivision

My niece and I have had a lot of fun making Fairy Houses from Laura Denison's (Following the Paper Trail) Summer Fairy House pattern.  It was a really great construction project - both of us learned some new techniques and we exercised our creative muscle by adding some unique touches to the houses (wait until you see what Sarah did inside her house!).  Here are the houses we made - Sarah says hers really looks like summer - it's the sunny house in the middle.

And here are the houses "after dark".  We added LED tea lights behind the windows so the fairies in the tower and front room would be illuminated.

Here are individual shots of the three houses.

First Sarah's house... if you look closely, you might be able to spy a fairy in the tower window and one in the front window.

And these fairies have a faithful companion - see him lying on the front lawn?  Sarah found a small figurine just the right size for her house.

A few dried flowers in the chimney complete the house.

Sarah used DCWV's Painted Petals stack on both the inside and outside of her house.

Halloween Carnival - "Glass" Hot Air Balloon

I gave myself a challenge to try and make a hot air balloon that looked like it had been made out of glass - I have Steampunk on the brain.

The balloon itself is actually a very straightforward construction.  I used the template available from Laura Carson (artfullymusing.bogspot.com) on her Hot Air Balloon tutorial page and just modified the length.  The five sides were made out of vellum.  A plastic piece was attached to each side and scored to give a look of individual glass panels and to give some flexibility to the sides.  Before I closed up the balloon completely I inserted a long screw post through a small hole in the top.

I reinforced the rim and then added a hinged door so that an LED tea light could be inserted to give the balloon a glow when it's dark.  I found some flat sided light bulbs and added them to the rim.

I wanted to have the option of either hanging the balloon or putting it on "legs" so it could stand at the back of my Halloween Carnival, so I attached the basket using some thin skewers so the whole unit would be sturdy.  I covered the skewers with waxed linen thread so they would look like thick rope.

The basket is a five sided chipboard box covered with embossed metal foil tape.  The characters are from Laura Carson's Halloween Collage Sheets.  I used her pin technique in the bottom of each character so they could easily stand up in the foam core base of the balloon's basket.

I painted two corks and suspended them from a chain to simulate ballast (don't you love the irony of corks for ballast?)  I added a couple of more gears on a skewer.

Halloween Carnival - Zombie Zipper

Today I'm answering Laura Carson's challenge to create an element of my own design to go with her Halloween Carnival.  To learn more about this challenge and the carnival project including details, tutorials and videos, please go to Laura's page dedicated to the carnival.

I knew I wanted to make a ride with some height so I searched for images of carnival rides and found one that I thought could work...the zipper.  I knew that capturing all the different movements would probably be too challenging, but I thought that I could design something that was similar.  The zipper turns on one central access point and the cauldrons swing and move as they go around.  I must confess that the side tower support design is basically the same as the system Laura designed for her ferris wheel.