One of my favorite patterns... again

I've used this pattern once already to decorate two cobalt-blue wine bottles [see here: Cobalt-blue wine] and I had some of this pattern left for later, so I used it for a garden teapot. This teapot was red and old hence it needed a proper renewal:

Vintage memories

Another part of my lost-and-found photos I've made few years ago. That time I was living in the Netherlands and Poland and got first ideas about this blog - unfortunately I didn't have time to make it then. Now it's high time for those creations to be presented :) They perfectly show my fondness to vintage and retro photography and their kinds (warm photo filters, cherry light flash, old lenses), therefore they are very sentimental - a stop motion impression :)

A glimpse of summer...

It's snowing outside and melting at the same time. The wind reaches 100 km/h this evening. Not quite a weather I like. My husband has lit the fireplace and we're trying to stay warm. That's why I started to browse photos I've made in our garden and on the meadow in summer. I remember I was about to create some kind of a vintage collection of them. Well, I forgot about them and now I found the folder. Here are just few of them- to remind you summer:

Retro business-card boxes

The last creation of 2011 I wished to publish earlier but I went for vacation to the Netherlands. Now I'm back with mind full of new ideas and I already announce a new kind of jewelry which will be presented very soon! Meanwhile - as I mentioned in my previous post - I start with Hipstamatic photography and decided to use it with my handicraft creations...

For the very first attempt I present the-end-of-the-year retro business-card boxes made using decoupage technique, shabby-chic and crackle. For those I used two famous classic portraits: the blue one is the portrait of Princess Marie Adelaide of France by (probably) Perronneau. The red one is the portrait of Lucretia Panciatichi by Agnolo di Cosimo (Bronzino):

Autumn Art Nouveau painted box

For the turn of seasons I've painted the reproduction of another art nouveau litograph. Of course it's Alphonse Mucha again, and a very famous picture. This time I took a pinewood box and covered it with a rosewood stain. It doesn't only look nice, it also smells like forest! Incredible specimen! I'm in love with it and it's also good to be used as a background for acrylic paint in shabby chic technique because it gives the aging effect. Probably I'll use it for making a nice white box with aged edges next time. Anyway my art nouveau reproduction is acrylic as always and looks like this:

Victorian purples

Another gift for my friend who wanted me to combine her own purple tissue (with swirly pattern) with some of victorian ladies motives. I had a proper decoupage paper full of nice reproductions of victorian fashion drawings. I chose three of them and cut them out. I like this connection of colors: purple + white + gold - that's why I based my design on it.

Chocolate-lover box

To express my gratitude to my friend, I've made something to remember for her. We're chocolate-freaks, my choice is dark chocolate with a huge ammount of cocoa and minimal ammount of sugar, usually filled with orange-peel or liqueur. Her choice is milk chocolate and white chocolate, pralines and bonbons - those with which my teeth suffer extremely ;) Anyway - to pay tribute to our taste - I've made a special chocolate box:

Vintage capsules

There was the time I didn't have access to wooden easter-eggs for decoupage because they were very rare in internet shops and became quickly out of stock. Now they can be found almost everywhere where handicraft supplies are being sold. But if you don't have your material to work with - you simply create it out of other things and do what you can. It was also the time when my father was very sick so we were visiting him in hospital often. From that days I've gotten many of those disposable shoe-pads you use in the hospital to walk around without dirtying anything. They all were made of wrapping film and put into colorful capsules you could have obtained from vending machines. I counted 23 of those capsules stored in my place and decided to do something of them. I still had some tissue scraps and other remnants, so I've created my own ball-shaped eggs ;)

Pastel roses

A quick view of decoupage'd pastel project I've made as an addition to romantic bedroom however it's been already taken away from me ;) Fortunately I still have some more of those tissues and I can produce more boxes...

Glamour black and white

I didn't post for some time due to lack of time, however I'm coming back with new ideas. As the very first project I've made a glamour black and white set for which I used one of popular motives - lace-looking tissue print. It's available in many colors but high black and white contrast seems to be the best:

I chose the middle one to create something eclectic and elegant and that something appeared to be: two big and two small jewelry boxes, perfect for glamour or victorian monochrome sets:

Art nouveau Ivy - reproduction on wood

Inspired by work of Alphonse Mucha from 1901, I've sketched and then painted it on a wooden box. It was previously another cigar box made of cherry wood, about 21 x 15 cm. I've painted the Ivy on the lid, and I covered sides of the box with acrylic paint texture using small sponge...

Of course there's an original engraving visible under layers of my paint - it was so deeply engraved that abrading it or filling it with more paint didn't cover it completely (I also didn't have silicon mastic in my stock yet). Anyway luckly it's not so visible in reality :)

Two additional Arsenic bookmarks

As I wrote before I promised to make more Arsenic-related creations. I've enjoyed designing bookmarks a lot, so I decided to make another two of them to add to the set. Here they are:

I used photo references from old, damaged photos and postcards from ca. 1900-1930, authors and models are unfortunately probably dead by now. I've scanned old photos, retouched them and re-painted them using my Wacom Intuos 3 graphic tablet - the best tool with a pen to get ;) One of models of that old photos was of course a fabulous Maude Fealy (1883-1971), who firstly appeared in a silent film in 1911. It was so nice to retouch that old and damaged photo and then to paint it from a sketch to restore her beauty...

Cobalt-blue wine...

This kind of thing happens when you clean your house up :) - you always find some strange items that: 1. you thought you've thrown away ten years ago, 2. you kept because someday they could be found useful (they usually weren't), 3. you forgot about them and now you're shocked you were keeping them, 4. you forgot about them and now you're mad at yourself you had amnesia...

Long time ago someone decided to make a house-made wine here and used two nice bottles for it. I don't remember the taste of that wine or who actually was occupied with it (and who got drunk by any chance!). I've just dragged that two lovely bottles out of my cabinet. No one confesses to a crime ;)

This is how one of those bottles looked like before:

Anyway, I started to like them instantly because of the color, a nice cobalt-blue hue. They are not a part of the set, actually they are completely different from each other in shape but the color is the same. One of them has got the sign of Peter Brum German Winery...

First thing I've done was ripping entire labels off the bottles. I've done it under a stream of hot water and I treated remains with salicylic spirit (used normally in hospitals for disinfection). Then I've made a simple decoupage on the surface:

Art nouveau Dance - reproduction on wood

I have a precious box which was accompanying me for years. When I left home and went to study at University, it was always with me. I kept my collection of incenses inside of it along with other useful things. When I moved through the entire Europe, it went with me and now it's still on my shelf...

Just a dark brown ordinary wooden box: 38 cm long, 14,5 cm wide, 9,5 cm tall. It was always plain without any pattern. But I decided to give it a bit of character, which could be my simple thank you for the item that has never abandoned me.

I was inspired by the original painting of Alphonse Mucha's Dance (from the Arts serries, 1898). I loved the idea of it, the movement, dynamism and colors refered to flames. It was breathtaking, so I came with an idea of re-painting it, of making reproduction of it on wood using my own chosen colors...

I was painting it for seven days, next two days were meant for covering details with golden paint and another two days - for coating. In sum: eleven long days, begining with a simple pencil sketch. But I'm really proud of the ready-made product ;)

My unique retro bookmarks for Arsenic

The idea about Arsenic blog was crawling in my head for a long time and I was also thinking about giving it a personal touch, creating a website which won't be only a presentation of things I make during free time, but also a place which mark my spot in the Internet. That's why I thought up a retro style fitting to my concept. Of course not everything I create is retro, vintage or related to Fin de siècle (but other ideas I'll present further in process).