"Put A Bird On It!" :: RNEST Challenge

It's time for another Rochester NY Etsy Street Team Monthly Challenge! November's theme is "Put A Bird On It!", which is more in reference to the delicious and varied poultry we will enjoy on Thanksgiving than the current cute trend. 

Personally though, I love putting birds on anything. I adore little birdies. If I could be any animal it would definitely be a little bird!

My "Party Bird" domino pendant was created with ridiculously tiny, hand-cut pieces of paper that I painted myself. Even the little poofy part on top of the hat is hand-cut! 

Head on over to the Rochester NY Etsy Street Team's blog to cast your vote! You have until November 14th at midnight.

You can also head on over to In My Head Studios' Etsy shop to buy this dapper little fellow for yourself! 

- Vickie

"Home Sweet Home" ICAD2 for 6/21/12

Ok, I might be making the Index-Card-A-Day Challenge a little more challenging than I hoped and/or planned. I've just been so inspired! I didn't realize my brain needed a little discipline to work on something everyday, and now I am hungry, hungry, hungry for art all the time. I LOVE this!
This card is from June 21, 2012. It definitely took me more than one day to do this. I'm not getting a card a day done -  and I gave myself permission to do that at the start. However, I do believe I am still benefitting from this challenge like crazy. If I'm not getting one card a day done then I am at least working on one (or two or three at a time) each day. AND THAT COUNTS.


This house, bird, and nest image is something I've worked on before in different formats - for domino pendants and ATCs. Now I felt it needed an ICAD2 work-up. 
I started by making a house shaped template that fit the index card. I cut the house out of another index card, pasted scrapbook paper over it, and added the tissue tape. Then I stitched around the edges on my sewing machine.  
The sky is layered torn dictionary pages secured with matte medium. I added some watered down blue paint then splattered really watery gesso over it. I left the torn edges because they reminded me of deckled edges on handmade paper. The edge was then shaded with a darker blue Copic marker. 
The lettering is hand stamped in red pigment ink - which I had to stamp a billion times because I always mess up the last letter and ruin it. It's matted with dark red cardstock. The edges are inked to "age" and soften them. 


The bird and nest images are from flickr's collage images group. I love the detail and texture in these pieces. My printer went light on the ink for this printing - not sure why. I went back over the pictures with colored pencils to bring out the color more. The gleaming highlight in the bird's eye is a dot of white gel pen. I also highlighted the eggs with white gel pen. 


After I adhered the bird and nest to the background it all looked very flat. I used colored pencils to shade around the bird and nest for some dimension. It really perked the piece up. I also ran a thin line of dark brown pencil to the very edges of the paper of the collage images to bring them out more. 


Oh, how I love using foreign postage stamps in my collage! I have about 20 pounds of old stamps (anyone need any?). I chose this one for the color and the country of origin - France - so it would tie in with the tissue tape behind it that has French on it.  


The back of the index card has the stitching I did with my sewing machine. I love sewing on paper. I'm stamping the date the card is finished on the back. I should go back and add some more details to the information of the piece. 

"home sweet home" Index-Card-A-Day2
Mixed media & paper collage on index card
3"x 5"
© 2012 Victoria Porter/In My Head Studios

This ICAD2 looks adorable on a tiny easel I found at the craft store! 

I am a bit behind on posting more ICADs that I have finished. There's much more to come!

- Vickie

Merry Christmas!

I got this as a gift when I was born from a grandparent... not sure which one. My twin sister has one just like it with her name on it. This is one of my most treasured belongings. So that makes it about 35 years old! Yikes!

I nearly died last night when it wasn't in the ornament box as we decorated our tree (rather late, I might add). The box it was in somehow got separated from the Christmas boxes in the basement and it was well hidden in a seat bench. I couldn't find my ornament for about an hour. It was a horrible feeling, but I'm happy now that it is safely on the tree! When my nieces were born I made sure to get one for each of them. It made my sister cry.

These are what I've been working on today and this week.

This one is inspired by Tim Holtz's 12 Tags of Christmas 2009: Day 5. These little plastic charms are a product in his line. The images are glued to the backs with Glossy Accents. You can see these pictures bigger at flickr by clicking on them.

I made this tag this morning to give to my mom for Christmas. I really like gold embossing powder! And I cannot let a tag be with just one ribbon. It has to have lots of foofiness!

This tag is for my mom as a gift. She's a big fan of my work! Ha! Anyway, what says "I love you" better than handmade?

I hope you are having a very merry Christmas, if it's your thing! xoxo

Winter Wishes Tag

This one was inspired by Tim Holtz’s 12 Tags of Christmas, which is sadly over for this year. I learned a lot of new techniques from Tim.

I had to improvise some of his instructions, as I didn’t have the same stamps or grungeboard. So I used chipboard from a cereal box for the snowman instead. I also don’t have a Dymo but I have the next best thing: a faux Dymo font in Photoshop. That’s where I made the “Winter Wishes” text and printed it on matte photo paper. The icicles and sparkliness on the snowman and flourishes is Stickles, a kind of glitter glue. It’s extremely sparkly and the snowman looks frosty. I made him a little scarf from some red ribbon printed with French words about love. The crackle in the background is Rock Candy Distress Crackle Paint. It’s the best one-step crackle I’ve ever seen!

Hope this puts you in a winter-y Holiday mood!

New Dominos

I’ve been really busy in the studio this week cranking out work for consignments and an upcoming show. Here are some sneak peeks to what I’ll be posting in my Etsy shop soon!

This one was made with a lot of little paper scraps I save from making other things. I hate throwing out good paper. There are quite a few containers of little paper scraps in my studio. I think this one is my favorite out of these five.

The one was created with a vintage air mail stamp and some collaged paper. The postal cancellation is a rubber stamped image.

Hopefully I'll get these posted to my Etsy shop soon! Call dibs now if you want something you see here!

Shameless Plug:

I will be at the
First & Last Arts & Crafts Show
May 1st, 2nd, and 3rd
5 – 10 PM
Spot Coffee
200 East Avenue
Rochester, NY 14604

Road Trip, Anyone?

I was invited to join a group on flickr called Altered Dominos & Other Altered Game Pieces. This group has some very talented people involved, and group forum discussions are lively and helpful. To be totally honest I had not altered a domino yet when I joined. The invitation to join was based on my bingo collage pendant, as it is an altered bingo card.

One of the group discussions was that of a swap for an altered domino keychain. The theme for the swap was “travel”. I signed up because I had yet to participate in a swap of any kind and have really wanted to connect with other artists like this for a while. I guess I jumped into this group with both feet being new to both domino altering and swaps. But I needed a challenge so I went for it.

My grandmother gave me about 700 very old black wood dominos to work with as well as some plastic white dominos. But they have collected dust in my studio for years. Now I had a reason to bust them out and get to work!

When I think of travel I think “road trip”. My parents had this huge old station wagon when I was growing up and we would take road trips all over the place in it. I practically grew up in the back of “Old Blue”. So my travel domino needed a car image.



I found a clip art piece I really liked and colored it in using Photoshop. The words came from an old book. The back of the domino has a map collage. The Route 66 charm is actually a button I’ve been hoping to use in my art for some time. It was just waiting for this project! I ordered the little license plate charm from theginghamgirl on Etsy as well as the keychain part from SimplyCrafting, whose shop has since closed. The domino is sealed with Mod Podge first then a generous coating of clear acrylic spray sealer. The blue on the domino is made with alcohol inks.

Off into the mail it went yesterday to takeabreak, the organizer of the group on flickr. I hope she likes it as much as I had fun creating it! I have signed up for more swaps in the future so I’ll have more dominos to share!