My name is Melissa Papke and I currently work at Splash of Color! Next month on November 8th, I will turn 51 years of age and I am almost 13 years crazy-happily married to my dreamboat of a husband, Brian. We don't have human children but we do have two fur-babies, a girl and a boy, Toffee and Nugget. I owned a Scrapbook store called The Scrapbook Garden (www.thescrapbookgarden.com) for 4 years here in Huntington Beach, but closed it over two years ago because of the downturn in the economy. I currently still teach three classes a month for page layouts and cards at another local store here in Huntington Beach and I still host my two weekend retreats for 30-50 ladies up in the Big Bear Mountains. I have actually been Scrapbooking since way back in high school (the late 1970s) when I made the first one for my high school sweetheart and I... mostly a collection of ephemera from our dates and photos of our school dances, but it's all in a scrapbook, so it counts! Because I owned a store, I mostly did Scrapbooking and Card Making for the last several years, but lately I have found myself branching out in to many other kinds of crafting. I have enjoyed all kinds of crafting throughout my life: scrapbooking, painting, needlepoint, etc... and now, mixed media! This is me:
The first project I'm posting today is something I've had in my noggin for about the last five years, but I don't drink alcohol and it took my Mom that long to send me enough of her wine corks so I could actually make it! Here it is:
My sister lovingly named this piece for me: "A Horse is a Horse, of Cork, of Cork... meet Mister Ed!" Silly, I know, but it made me laugh and it kind of stuck! The background is on a 36"x24" canvas-wrapped board and was collaged using Matte Gel with two different handmade papers I found at Art Supply Warehouse. I then painted the entire background with some amazing colors from the LuminArte Silks Paints: Honey Amber, Nutmeg, Chestnut Brown, and a little Cinnamon Brown thrown in for good measure! Around the edges I used the Hematite Ferro Special Effects Paste for texture, let it dry, and then painted over it with Cinnamon Brown Silks Paint. There are 230 wine corks in this piece! That is a LOT of wine! I made Mister Ed's eye out of polymer clay and painted it black. The final touches on the mane and the foliage in the bottom right corner were purchased at Michael's in the floral section. I'm pretty happy with the way this turned out considering it was my first foray in to crafting with corks, but I truly believe that the Silks Paints made all the difference in the way this looks!
On a final note, if you get a quirky idea in your head, just make it! Don't worry about how it will turn out... just put your creativity to work and try something new! There's always a chance that something might not turn out like you imagined it, but there's also a chance that it might turn out amazing, but you'll never know if you don't take the chance. Most importantly, just have fun and enjoy your time being creative.
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