Finding A New Direction

I've been thinking a lot about the art that I create lately.  First I was a painter, and a crafter, but mostly a painter.  I got my first real set of oil paints when I was about 11 years old.  Before that it was paint by numbers kits, although I rarely followed the numbers and staying inside the lines was totally out of the question.

When I started college (I was not an art major) the oil paints slipped away, no pun intended, and my creative outlet became pastels and pencil, and occasionally watercolors.  But over time, even these artistic endeavors dwindled as work took more and more of my time. 

After I married (I married late by the way - I was 36!) I was luckily to be in a position to start exploring my creative side again.  I created decoupaged plates, painted Santa faces on wood slabs, decorated wreathes, and even planted flowers in vintage containers.  Eventually, I started making dolls with cloth bodies, sculpted heads and hands, and costumes sewn from vintage fabrics.  I attended local craft fairs and art shows with my mom and sister; and we did pretty good during the hey-day of such events.

Ugh!  The turtle neck makes me look like I'm in a neck brace! 

Why don't our loved ones tell us these things before we go out in public?

Here are some early Santa's.  I even made the bases out of old lamp parts.

Over time however, the craft show craze began to fade and so I looked for some other venue to sell my goods.  By this time, I was making dolls almost exclusively.  I was lucky enough to find a wonderful gallery that would take my work (more on the gallery in another post.)  My dolls have now evolved to fully sculpted characters with wire and wood armatures.

Halloween and Christmas are my favorite holidays.

Vintage tins became my base of choice, and I use lots of old springs to make bobbles.

It's been a wonderful experience.  But...I feel myself becoming less and less motivated to create fully sculpted figures.  Instead, I am more and more drawn to the mixed media creations I find in magazines like Somerset Studio and on your blogs.  In fact, I have been so inspired that I decided to take the plunge and try to create a piece of mixed media art myself based on some of the things I love most...books, the garden, vintage lace, buttons and millinery, and old photos and paper. 

Here are the things I've gathered so far.  Although, I expect things will probably change as I go along.

 These are all things that I've collected over time.

So I guess, in a way, this post can also be called..."Tuesday's Treasures."

So thank you for the inspiration dear friends.  Wish me luck!