Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Craft Time: Specimen Jars

For this past Halloween, my art collective helped to decorate for a Halloween party. It was my duty to make, among other cool things, specimen jars. I had glass jars filled with all kinds of stuff, like a weird neon glowing monster (made from a child's squid toy turned inside out) and food coloring; a headless deformed fetus (made from a squishy rhino toy I cut the head off and painted a flesh tone) floating in water with a little coffee in it to make it murky; a jar filled with reddish black liquid and spaghetti to look like worms; a plastic rat in a jar; and these three beauties I decided to keep on my mantel all year long!
 
 
For the Death Moths I painted silk butterflies on wire to look like death moths and positioned them so, gluing the wire in place on a circular piece of cardboard and covered it with reindeer moss. I then had a broken stem wineglass I was keeping to make a terrarium out of, and used that to cover the moths. This i also hot glued to the cardboard bottom.
For he Praying Mantis i took a plastic toy and painted it, hot glued it ono a stick but it inside a upside down jelly jar and threw some moss in the bottom.
For the Raven, I bought a dollar tree Halloween bird, glued it onto a stick, wedged it into a storage jar, and threw in some more reindeer moss. I also made specimen tags for all of my jars. For these I went online a searched for old turn of the century medical labels, stained them with coffee, filled them out with witty names, dates, just what ever info I thought would be cool, and pasted them on the side of the jars. They were fun to make and at the party, combined with glow sticks, they were quite breath taking. The next day, the host texted me saying that while cleaning up (and being hung over) she almost vomited when she took a closer look at some of them, hahahaaha, mission accomplished!!!!!

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Slightly Greenish Thumb: Terrariums

I put together a few terrariums recently. It all started with the finding of some great glass bowls at a thrift store for 50 cent.

One I filled with about four different types of moss I collect from sidewalks, parking lots, and swamps. I made a put down a layer of soil, then the mosses, and to top it off I added a bird skull, a feather, and a petrified rib bone. For the holidays I wanted to get festive so I added the red berries, and I loved the way the contrasted so I just left them.





The next one I wanted it to have a desert feel, so along with the plants I also used sand, petrified wood, a piece of finger coral I stood up to look more like a rock formation, as well as rugged looking shells and rocks.















The last one I used aloe, sea glass, and a sea shell. This type of aloe is a stemless variety and will bloom. I am hoping it will grow to dwarf the bowl, and look like a small little root ball anchoring this huge spiky plant.

Monday, January 2, 2012

Hiatus....

But now I am back bitches.... Got the use of my camera again, and got some new stuff to post, so stay tuned!!!!!