Visiting Port Costa

Theater of Dreams

I meant to post this last year, after visiting the magical world of Wendy Addison in Port Costa, California.  For only a few weekends a year, Wendy opens her little shop for holiday shoppers.
Inside you mind vintage fixtures holding imaginable treasures that take you back to some mysterious time.

 Here are three little german glitter birds i purchased.  They were a lovely addition to my bird themed christmas tree this year.

 I picked up two bears- all dressed up in vintage bullion fringe for their circus debut.

 And finally a card making kit with lovely circus themes stickers.

If you want to visit Wendy's shop - check out her website next October for her open house dates.

October Altered Calendar Swap: Circus Theme

 Here are the pages i did in Dorothy's circus themed calendar.    Once i get this in the mail tomorrow - I'll be all caught up!  Still not quite organized after the big move in September.  But i spent many hours in my craft room this weekend and last creating these pages.  Here is the link to the pages i did last Spring.

 I purchased a grab bag of circus themed papers from Zinnia in South Pasadena before i moved north - knowing i would have this book to work in.  Unfortunately i did not get to attend their fall show - with a Cirque de Bizarre theme.  In the stash of papers was this title page about strange creatures - well it was just the thing to pair with Lionel here.

 The page on the left was in the book - i added the page on the right - for a riot of circus activity. The glitter circus letters were added for some texture.

 The page on the left was in the book - circus acrobats with really strong hair, i guess.  So i added Carlotta on the right - since she apparently had really strong teeth. And they both had lovely pink accents - so i tied them together with some lace, ribbon and buttons.  Some dictionary text adds a nice vintage touch. Tea and Teeth.

 The page on the right reminded me once again of that Anthropologie catalog from last year with the circus images.  Hard to believe i didn't have to dig too deep into my boxes of papers to find the page on the left.  I know, right?  A perfect match!  Well - i did give them some gingham and calico skirts to tie them all together. And a really crappy attempt at making red pompoms out of yarn.

And finally here is the sign in page Dorothy created for us.  I found (again completely by accident) an image from a Degas painting of two circus girls.  I could have created a whole spread with them!  But too late - they'll have to content themselves at the back of the book with the other circus characters!

Circus Circus - April Altered Calendar

Here are the pages i just completed in Dorothy's colourful Circus themed calendar. Each spread had a image or illustration related to circus.  Our task was to embellish the pages to create a lovely circus themesdcollage.  The first spread above had the illustration on the right.  The picture on the left came from a recent Anthropologie catalog!  Yeah - how cool is that?  It matched almost PERFECTLY.  Of course Anthro is not selling beaded and feathered costumes - i made those.  Paper dolls for grown ups!

This spread had the vintage image on the left of a daredevil tightrope walker. I went with the  black and white theme and added a similar image i found online.  I cut the edges to look like a photograph with deco edge scissors. I created a flap with silver metallic tape.  I did some journaling under the flap and added the silver heart with the phrase I "heart" danger. Some white gesso scraped on with a credit card and some silver ink spatters finish off the spread.

I had no idea what to do with this spread - which had an x-ray of a sword swallower. How creepy!  Then i happened to see the postcard on the left, sitting on my card stand in my craft room. It is an advertisement for Cirque Berzerk.  Not sure where i picked it up - but it was perfect!  I added some striped paper and tape and made another little flap.  I finished it off with a skull and crossbones silver charm.

Ok - back to the happy circus of our youth! Page on the left was in the book - page on the left - more collage courtesy of Anthropologie. I added some simple tape stripes to tie them together. Seriously.  if you don't already, sign up to get their catalogs.  Every month they are filled with luscious images.  You never know when you can use them in an altered book!

This spread was all me.  There was a circus poster of a lion tamer - but i could not figure out what to do.  Searched on-line and found this fun image instead! These lovely ladies are holding big cones of pink cotton candy. Cotton balls i dyed pink with Color Mists from Outside the Margins.  Coincidently Aileen is participating in this round robin.  Please check out her blog to see some of the colour packed pages she has done already.  Can't wait to see what she does with this book!

And finally here is the really cool sign in page Dorothy created for each artist to leave their name and a final bit of collage. What a fun theme and a joy to work in this book!  

Circus Circus

The latest altered book pages i completed were in Shelley's book titled "Circus". It is a wonderfully colourful book, filled with whimsical illustrations and fabulous collage. This was the last swap of the season for my group, sadly one member was absent - so i did not get my own book back today, we'll have to swap by mail.
For Shelley's book i wanted to do something interactive, i mean afterall - the circus is so chock full of excitement. My first spread was a Circus Train. This was a very labour intensive spread - but fun to do. First i used sky paper at the top of the page, and a gravel-y looking paper for the bottom. Then i cut out 8 little colourful houses and hand drew windows and doors and shingles and a chimney. Very charming and naif.

Next i had to construct the circus cars to hold the animals. I used some playful scrapbook paper and cut out a simple shape. Added wheels form another paper that sort of looks like rubber. Some of these papers came from a 12x12 pack that included many "realistic" pages.

Next i had to find the animals. What better source than the stack of National Geographic magazines on the floor of my studio. The pickings were slim. I found a good tiger, and the head of a rhino, but for the most part the scale was off. I found all these on google images instead.

For the cages i thought about cutting out black card stock, but my knife skills are not great. So how about using a black sharpie? When the three pens i tried had all dried up, i decided to print some basic gates on transparency paper. Glued to the train cars, the animals look right at home. Please i am not condoning the caging of wild anumals! This is merely a historical look at circus trains from the early part of the 20th century.

A bit of gold dimensional paint and some wooden boards for the train tracks - and we're done.

For the second spread, i found a cute illustration of a circus dog show. This was even more hard work that the train! I wanted to make some of the elements move, so i printed out two copies of the picture and cut out three of the dogs and the ball. I figured the best way to make it all work was to do a pop up. it took a while to figure out where to make the folds so that everything would be visible and still allow the mechanisms to move. The ball and the dog on it have brads to allow them to rotate. Two other dogs have red gingham pull-tabs that allow the dogs to either "jump" through the hoop, or "jump" over the barrel.

I made good use of another one of those "realistic" papers - i cut all the edges of the hay to make it look fluffy. Or spikey, whatever real hay looks like. A couple of pieces of eyelash yarn glued to the bottom of the pages reinforces the three dimensional qualities.

The background is done with strips of red and blue stars and dots, with a strand of gold stars like garland across the tent.

This was a really fun altered book to work in. And it was great meeting with the group today. We'll start up again in January. Anyone want to join us?