bricolage Archives - Page 43 of 45

Look at this horrible thing I made!

I am blowing through projects that have been waiting over a year, now that my workshop is finished. It’s so easy and comfortable to use and access all my tools and materials, and the light is so good in our kitchen. I’m especially thrilled to have finished my own Horribella doll at last!

The first Horribella was made as a host gift for a fae-themed party thrown by one of my beloved friend-muse-patrons. Her wings were hand-decorated with many crystals.

I particularly like the way the corset of this one came out.

The second was bought by one of my beloved friend-muse-patrons and lives in her SOMA loft.

And the third was traded to my friend Aimee Baldwin, for one of her extraordinary vegan taxidermy creations ( a mantis of course!).

I was really devastated to give up the third one, since it was so specially unpleasant, but I wanted that mantis badly.

So I saved the other half of the iridescent flower at the top of the corset (originally scavenged from the wings of some drugstore fairy doll that became a mermaid in a shadowbox at least a decade ago).

Then I saved the particular trims I used, and enough of the superfine damson-colored leather strips I ordered from a purse company in LA, and a tiny bit of the pleated burgundy lace, and just enough of the bug-printed emerald green French wired ribbon.

I sculpted a new body and head and painted them, but there was a reaction between the paint and primer.

Spray painting plastic, no matter how much time you spend on The Fwoosh, is unpredictable. So I had to scrape off the paint and reprime the pieces, and then pack them, because it was time to move to Berlin.

I was terrified that off-gassing primer/paint reaction could start a fire, so I waited to pack them ’til the very last day, and wound up throwing the pieces in a little box within one of the randomly packed boxes of the morning we left. Even though this project was incredibly important to me! And the materials to dress her were packed separately of course.

I am a crazy person, and sadly not always in a fun way.

(Yes, I started packing one year before we left, and I was still packing the DAY we left. Probably I shouldn’t have spent so many nights obsessively organizing my mixed media materials before we left. But it did make unpacking them an utter delight.)

So it was all horribly stressful! And I was still afraid that my Frankenstein mix of paints and solvents would start a fire and burn up our storage unit or shipping container!

But there was no fire, and the ship didn’t sink, and the train didn’t crash, and the truck didn’t go into a snowbank, and the box didn’t get dropped, and nothing got lost, and so I was able to assemble a Horribella of my own at last. She is not for sale!

As always when I make a doll, I am deeply indebted to my beloved friend-muse-Patron Monique Motil, creator of Sartorial Creatures and the most inspiring dollmaker I know.

I mostly think of myself as a horribly lazy person who keeps terrible hours, sleeps a lot and wastes huge swathes of time every day.

But sometimes I think of myself as a highly effective person whose productivity is just really weirdly distributed.

Here are the various bricolage projects I did this month, in between building the workshop, unpacking my mixed media materials, teaching a new class, starting a new painting, and drawing.

These flies are what I call “Uplift Projects”, after David Brin’s “Uplift” series.

They’re commercially produced decorative items I bought somewhere for almost nothing and am “improving” (according to my weird personal lights). I got these awesome glitter flies for 90% off at Cost Plus after Halloween. WIP Uplift Fly on the left, completed one, with beading, Swarovski crystals, more shades of glitter and micropearls on the right.

This decoupage table originally came from Ross.

I made them give me 10% off because it had a chipped corner. I repaired the corner with epoxy clay and spraypainted the whole thing with matt fuchsia acrylic from Dupli-Color, the German spray paint company that has a special line for graffiti artists.

Then I cut out all these amazing German decoupage pieces.

These are reproductions of the decoupage elements that have been produced here since the Victorian era.

I used acrylic varnish to attach them in my weird little bug-infested way, painted the trim on the table with artist’s acrylic, and covered the decoupage with twelve coats of acrylic varnish. That actually was a pain in the ass. But worth it, I think. I’ve had the Alphonse Mucha coaster you see on top of the table since I was fourteen years old.

This dresser is a piece I got on Amazon.de through their repacking program.

You can often buy things that are brand new and perfectly good but have been returned and repacked at the warehouse for a fraction (20% in this case) of the original cost. It was stuffed all higgledy-piggledy into the box but all the (many, many) pieces were there, so I carefully assembled it.

Then I stained it with ten coats of Hazelnuss dunkelbraun stain (the equivalent of the exploding-on-Pinterest General Finishes Java Gel stain). Ten coats may sound like a lot but with water-based gel stain, the coats go on and dry so fast it’s really no hardship.

perry gargano knob The knobs are ones I’ve been collecting for years, like the brass verdigris tentacles from Perry Gargano for Anthropologie. (Of course I got mine all on clearance!). I’d learned from my research before we moved that German apartments have ZERO closets or built-in storage. So I planned for buying a lot of furniture, and even splurged on four bat skull knobs from Blue Bayer on Etsy two weeks before we left.

Buying handmade items directly from an artist is the one time I’m happy to pay full price.

I’ve had this table for almost twenty years- I got it at the Berkeley flea market.

It’s been spray-painted black, then pink, then black again. But this is the first time I tried making it ombré. I’m pretty thrilled with the results.

I used a deep sapphire blue, a dark forest green, and a pale celadon, all gloss finish from Dupli-Color. I built a sorta cheapass spray booth on the balcony out of boxes to paint it in.

Don’t spray paint indoors, dude. You don’t want to get what we used to call Technicolor Phlegm.

I made this little shadow box out of some ribbon roses I made for my first wedding, hoarded velvet leaves and a frame I got at the Berkeley Flea, also like 20 years ago.

I got this plaster deer head from a German eBay dealer who specializes in vintage hunting lodge taxidermy.

Taxidermy is so cheap here, Williamsburg craft beer bar owners would lose their minds. My dealer has been very kind about accepting my “Best Offers” for the most weird, kinda messed up pieces he lists.

I repaired the big chunk of missing plaster with epoxy clay, and repainted it. I left the rest of the damage ’cause I like it.

Now I’m waiting til the next time our handyman James comes over with his magic SuperStudFinder, which can detect metal and electrical wiring in the walls. Our walls have a LOT of janky old wiring in them so I like to check before I drill a great big hole for an anchor.

I think that’s all my bricolage this month.

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Suzanne Forbes, a New Yorker thriving in Berlin. Crowdfunded documentary art made possible by the generous support of her Patrons. https://www.patreon.com/SuzanneForbes.

Tag Archives: bricolage

Horribella Mark IV: an unpleasant Victorianish doll-thing!