Artfest! Day Two

I've been home from Artfest for about a week now, and I'm still integrating all that happened there . . . it was truly a wonderful event! And integrating has taken long enough that I haven't been blogging . . . though I have been spending time in the studio, and even working in the yard! Yummy . . . I had forgotten that yardwork really can be enjoyable, especially with mild sunshine and a double-dosing of effective non-drowsy allergy medication!

My class the second day was with yet another teacher that I had never heard of but came to love, Melissa Manley. She is a jeweler and sculptor, and our class was called Paper Ruins. It combined something I am familiar with - shrines - with something that was a stretch - working small - and a new skill - casting Paperclay. Perfect! We created our own molds, molded our Paperclay, and constructed our tiny shrines using matchboxes as a focus. (I kept thinking about Dayna and her upcoming Matchbox Shrine class!) Here are two that I worked on as they appeared at the end of class:


And, on the way back to the hotel that night, one of the wings broke off of the shrine on the right . . . Realizing how tough it would be to reattach it convincingly, I improvised:

It was a great problem-solving exercise: how do I take an accident and make it work in my favor? I ended up adding the orange elements, including the funny plastic chicken feet, and I think the whole piece actually ended up being more interesting.

I also ended up making a few minor changes to the other one:

At home this past week, I've been working on a cigar box to hold the second one - it's encrusted with little bees and honeycomb . . . This coming week, I've got to get back to work on a pay-the-bills kind of project, and it's going to be tough to get my head back into it.