Direct from France, er, California

I received this lovely canvas this week from Kathy Jacobson in our Marie Canvas Swap, hosted by Maria Rodarte. It is 8" x 10" with bits of charm in every square! Can't wait to figure out where to hang it. The photo doesn't do it justice. Other goodies came in the mail this week. I'll have to get them posted. Stay tuned.

ATCs, ACEOs and Sneaky Sneak Peeks: It's All Code for Art

First off, I hate how my camera angles make my ATCs look crooked, but trust me, they're not! They are perfect rectangles as prescribed: the size of baseball trading cards. I made 24 of the little buggers this weekend for no reason. Usually I do a batch for swaps when I'm headed to an art event, but I had all this good collage art from some folks that I wanted to use. By the way, in case you don't know, the 'collage art' means they post or sell or give-away images for other artists to incorporate into their own images, like I have done here. Often 'their' images are from vintage photos or vintage cards, which they have enhanced digitally with color or other effects. Then they have made the work available for the next round of artists (like moi) to cut up, embellish, digitally alter more or whatever.

I have had a project looming, which I'll describe in a minute, but to ease into it I started playing with images and ended up making artist trading cards (ATCs) or ACEOs: art cards, editions and originals. ATCs are always traded, not sold, and ACEOs are considered miniature works of art and may be sold (or traded).

So I gathered some of my newest favorite images from Teesha Moore, Sandra Evertson, Lisa's Altered Art and iTkUpiLLi on Etsy and began creating. The Dresden foil trims I used are from both ArtChix Studio and Paula's Kit Club.

The bottom picture is a 'sneak peek' for Kathy Jacobson of an altered art canvas I made for her and will be mailing this week. Kathy was my assigner partner in Maria Rodarte's Marie Canvas Swap. The task was to divide an 8.5" x 11" wrapped canvas into 12 sections with Marie Antoinette-inspired art. Like Marie, the assignment was intended to be 'over the top.' And I think I did that.

This little sneak peek contains a copy of one of Kathy's own pieces of artwork, a Marie-inspired altered letter 'M' that just appeared on the cover-no less- of the April-May 2009 issue of Stampers' Sampler magazine. It was also featured on page 37.

After painting the canvas in shades of blue, green and cream, I used vintage ephemera like an old postcard, old prescription, French book pages, Marie images to make a collage. I sectioned it off with new and vintage trims and added an old bottle for a vase, vintage jewelry bits and baubles, new and old buttons, lace and fabric scraps, rhinestones, a key, a keyhole, vintage millinery and of course, lots of glitter.

I'll post a full picture after the swap is complete. Of course this means I have something yummy coming from Kathy, too. Can't wait!

My Marie Antoinette Craze Continues

When the peach curly feather arrived from Dale of Sea Dream Studio http://www.seadreamstudio.net/, I knew it was finally time to pull out my wire, wood and paper mache dress forms and start creating. I'd already made three Marie Antoinette figures: one for Lisa of The Faerie Zine http://faerieenchantment.blogspot.com/, one for Cyndi http://dragonflysdreamz.blogspot.com/ of FrstyFrlk for The Faerie Zine costume swap,

and one "maybe" for me, which I futilely sent to Somerset Studio http://www.stampington.com/ in hopes of publication.

But, I had tons of brocade, passementerie, ribbon, lace, silk flowers, little birds, vintage jewels and gems, German glass glitter, French text and more, all of which were crying out to be used. Having just finished reading my fourth Marie Antoinette biography this summer, the latest by her lady-in-waiting Madame Campan, written in 1823, I was more than ready for the task. In fact, Caroline Weber's The Queen of Fashion has so much sartorial imagery in it, I don't know how one could help but create after reading it.

So, last night's result was four Maries "quatre Maries, quatre reines," whatever you want to call them; they kept me at it from about 7 p.m. to nearly 4 a.m., but once I got going I was in the mode. French mode that is, and conveniently "mode" means "fashion" in French. Tre's bien!

I just listed three of these in my etsy shop http://www.hpsgsmith.etsy.com/ in case you, too, would like to own a mini Marie. The blue and white toile is headed for the delightful Mary Ann of Follow Your Bliss http://firstborn.wordpress.com/ for our "Marie Swap." I'll be writing an art vs. history article on Marie for Mary Ann's first zine, due out this fall. Bon soir.

By the way, did you know one reason the French treasury was depleted, which brought on the infamous French revolution and The Reign of Terror, was that the French government under Louis XVI, Marie's husband, had sent great amounts of money and munitions to help "our side" in the American Revolution. It wasn't that the French king was so much in favor of revolt, or even democracy, but the French were happy to support any side that was against England. They (the French and English/England) quickly made up, however, and English imports poured into France, which did not help that economy on its collision course with the destiny of the revolution.

Give Me More Marie! I'm on French Overload.

I just finished the biography of Marie Antoinette by Antonia Fraser, wife of Harold Pinter. Fraser is well-known for her amazingly in-depth research, and the book did not disappoint. If only there could have been more to the story! But with a life cut short at 37 by the French Revolution, the biography could only go on for so long. Nonetheless, I was inspired to create another 'Marie' figure based on the incredible couture from the period.

As Queen of France, Marie was a patron of all of the arts, including music, ballet, theatre and of course, fashion. She was not as interested in the great painters, but instead constructed a little theatre, the Petit Trianon, where she put on plays with family and friends. Often her own dress or hair were theatres themselves, with elaborate scenes constructed within.

My glass-bottom 'bird cage' skirt features a scene with vintage millinery and jewelry bits. The skirt hoop and train are constructed from the wire form from an old hat as well as brocade, tulle and velvet leaves and ribbon. This 'bird cage couture,' as coined by the lovely and talented Sandra Evertson http://sandraevertson.blogspot.com/ was made even more perfect for me by the markings on the jar I found just today in an antiques shop.

The bodice or corset is a 7" wire mesh corset form from Stampington and Co. http://www.stampington.com/. I cut the bottom off and used it to form the wire skirt on another Marie I made here http://bly-me.blogspot.com/2008/05/art-and-blythe-come-together.html. It is shown in the middle pictures above also. For the glass-bottom Marie, I placed a vintage doily in the corset top and trimmed the edges with sequins.

After I realized I could get two, two, two Maries in one, I decided to get even more thrifty and used the Stampington two-piece small mannequin with hoop form http://www.stampington.com/html/wire_forms.html for four different projects: 1) the Last Beautiful Dress Castle in the Meadow project I blogged about below here http://lillysoflondonish.blogspot.com/2008/06/last-beautiful-dress-at-castle-in.html, using the top of the dress form, 2) a yet-to-be-done-hopefully-tomorrow papier mache bust into which I stuck the feet from the Stampington form, and 3) two Marie 8 x 8 book pages for The Faerie Zine, http://faerieenchantment.blogspot.com/, which I made by cutting the skirt piece in half at the sides. Those pages are here http://lillysoflondonish.blogspot.com/2008/04/queen-has-spoken-and-she-said-tres-bien.html and here http://lillysoflondonish.blogspot.com/2008/04/if-idle-hands-are-bad-im-looking-good.html.

Oh, and just in case you think I might be sick of all things Marie, I also made the 18" figure shown at the very top as a gift. It is a papier mache form covered with French text, handmade papers, feathers, beads and many vintage trims. I think I might have been good at passenmenterie, the French art of adornment, such as with tassels, brocade trims and such that we might think of as upholstery trims. C'est la vie.

If Idle Hands are Bad, I'm Looking Good

It was another one of those weeks that just would not end. Having an overnight meeting in the middle of the week just makes five days last forever. I could not wait for Friday night to get home and organize my studio. A week of mail and art supplies had piled up, as well as a bunch of stuff from vacation. I can't work with a mess about me, so the first order of business was putting everything away (so I could get it back out. I know, I know.)

My first batch of supplies from Hannah Grey had arrived http://shop.hannahgrey.com, and I was ready to see what I could make with the stash. As a Design Team member I have 35 days to make something with each of the materials I receive. So, I used the HG blank tag book, collage sheets, Paris charms and ephemera to make this circa 1947 notebook from Paris Fashion Week. I imagined what kind of notes a young ingenue interning with Mlle. Coco Chanel might be taking, along with fabric swatches and sketches she might be keeping. The good news is you can buy all these supplies and more at http://www.hannahgrey.com.

I was hoping to work on my 28 original pages for the Arte du Blythe fat book I am hosting. I am 1/7th done, which is not much! I have some supplies and art gathered but realized with other deadlines looming, I needed to move on to something else.

As one of six artists asked to be in a Marie Antoinette 8 x 8 round robin, I realized I only had a few days left before I needed to mail my pages due to leaving for Art & Soul http://www.artandsoulretreat.com April 30. I'd had this wire dress from from Stampington sitting around and knew I wanted to use it. Thankfully, the muse kicked in and one of my pages is done, which is 50%, a lot better than 1/7th!

The multi-talented Lisa Kettell http://faerieenchantment.blogspot.com is hosting the Marie book with plans to either submit it for publication to L.K. Ludwig for her book on collaborations or for Lisa's own second book. Either way, the pressure was and is on. Every artist is so talented, and without slighting anyone, least of all Lisa, I must say that Debrina Pratt's http://whimsicalworldoffaeries.blogspot.com artwork makes me crazy with excitement! Knowing my Marie pages would be alongside hers was very intimidating. Debrina's style is just one in a million. I love her colors, her characters, even her use of fonts. See what I mean? I'm just crazy about her. But, baby Marie came out all right, so on to page two and the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey would say.