2015 Little House

10th Annual “Albuquirky Little Houses”
Silent Auction Fundraiser Friday, May 1, 2015

5:00 – 8:00 pm 
Held at: Sumner & Dene,
517 Central Ave NW (upstairs)
During Frank McCulloch’s Opening Reception
 

This year's Albuquirky House Tour will be May 2 -- check out the wonderful event at:

http://offcenterarts.org/events/albuquirky-house-tour/

House of Quotes

This year my Little House entry for OffCenter's 10th annual silent auction (see http://offcenterarts.org/little-houses-silent-auction/) is entitled "House of Quotes."   

 

My idea for this year's house was to use a house quotation and a vintage image related to the quote on each of the six basic surfaces. 

Some of the six ideas started with the quote and some of them started with the image.  The first two photos each show you three surfaces of the little house and the remaining six photos are close-ups of each of the six surfaces. 

Many of the embellishments on the house are rusty pieces of metal I've picked up on my daily walks in the North Valley.  Being primarily a paper artist, I usually completely cover my little houses with some sort of decorative paper, but this year I decided to paint the little house and show some of the texture and cracks in the wood.  The basic wood forms are provided by OffCenter -- the base of my house is cut from a wood 4x4" 

 

 

On the smallest side of the house I used the "may your home always be too small" quote -- matched it up with a line up of vintage bathing beauty friends and added a gold milagro -- a small gold house!

 

 

 

On the opposite side of the house I used the "house without books" quote, and added an image of a vintage ABC Book.

On one surface of the roof is the "house of cards" quote -- with three vintage cards.

 

 

The other side of the roof (the side of the roof with a crack!) has the "falling" Irish blessing with the image of a falling man.  I "patched" the crack with one of my found rusty objects.

This is my favorite side of the house -- "A house doesn't become a home until love moves in."  The squarish embellishment is one of the most favorite things I've ever found along the roadways on my daily walks -- it's some sort of a paper gasket!

On the other large side -- I just had to use the vintage image I had found of a tiger cat standing on its head!  Thus the "cat's house" quote.

 

 

My Little House donation to last year's silent auction can be viewed at

http://primarilypaper.blogspot.com/2014/03/2014-little-house.html

 

and my donations for previous years at

 http://primarilypaper.blogspot.com/2013/03/quirky-little-houses.html



Contest Cards 2015

2015 CARD CONTEST ENTRIES

The categories for this year's card contests at the Rubber Stamp Convention in February were "The Shell Game" for Saturday and "Fantasyland" for Sunday.

Neither category really "spoke" to me, therefore I didn't want to go out and buy any new rubber stamps to create my entries, so it took me awhile to come up with ideas using what rubber stamps I already own.

 

The Shell Game

You'll get a laugh out of my boo-boo on this entry.  I have a lot of rubber stamps created by Elaine Madrid and one of those stamps is of a woman wearing what I thought was some type of a leaf skirt and an anemone shell bra.  Shell Game.  Shell Bra.

 

 

Then, what did I have to accompany her?  I have quite a few little ocean/shell rubber stamps that I purchased for teaching the "Mermaid Grotto" class (see blog entry), so, I rounded up those little rubber stamps and used them to encircle the central figure, kind of like wings and Achilles' winged heels.   The small shell rubber stamps are from  www.iloverubberstamps.com (which may now be out of business).  The shimmery paper is called "Shimmer Sheetz" by Elizabeth Craft Designs -- I got the paper at an estate sale, so I do not know where it is retailed.  I thought the paper looked sort of watery - appropriate for a shell theme.   Below is my finished entry:

 

 

And below is a side shot to show you that I elevated each of the cut-outs with foam adhesive squares.

 

I sent photos of my card entries to my Seattle friend Giselle who works in the Cactus House at the Volunteer Park Conservatory.   Come to find out, Giselle was quite familiar with the image for this woman -- and it turns out that it is not a woman wearing an anemone bra and  leaf skirt -- she is wearing a cactus bra and a cactus skirt in a Roy Drachman photo from the 1940's.  You can read more about the photo shoot at 

 http://tucson.com/roy-drachman/image_b60d707c-696c-11e1-8960-001871e3ce6c.html

 

 

Fantasyland

So, now I've got another conundrum -- I don't have any unicorn rubber stamps or Disney rubber stamps or fairy rubber stamps for the Fantasyland category.  The closest thing I could come to fantasy is a mermaid -- and I could also use some of the other underwater rubber stamps I had pulled out to audition for use in my entry for The Shell Game category.  I used a mermaid rubber stamp by Linda Malcolm of Lost Coat Designs  http://www.lost-coast-designs.com/, and all the other rubber stamps are also from  www.iloverubberstamps.com.  I embossed the sea fan directly on the background "wave" paper, and elevated most of the other images using adhesive foam squares.  Here's my entry for Fantasyland and a side view showing the 3-D effect.

I'm sad to report I didn't win any prizes this year, but then again, I wasn't very inspired!   You can view my card contest entries for previous years (including some winners!) at http://primarilypaper.blogspot.com/2013/03/contest-cards.html

and if you love mermaids, you might want to take a look at my Mermaid Madness post:
http://primarilypaper.blogspot.com/2013/12/mermaid-madness.html