Folksy Valentines Swap - The Final Frontier

If anyone happens to pop past my blog and read my ramblings, you will know that I have made several attempts at creating something for my Folksy Valentines Swap.  Well the person I was to send it to, Teasemade finally received the item in the post, so I can now show you the process of making it.  (I didn't want to spoil her surprise by posting this too early)

This is the of making my poison heart - in line with my anti-valentines range The Angry Wife.  I'm not really anti Valentines, I just wanted to try something new with my jewellery and which would be worn by those who have been scorned and want to show the world they don't give a damn! But I also wanted my Valentines Heart swap to carry the theme through.

I used 3mm wire to form the 3d heart.

 

The wire had to be twisted to make sure that none of the wire pieces slipped.  I tried to use one whole piece of wire where I could and then added smaller pieces if I felt certain sections of the structure were or might slip out of place.  Everything had to stay where it was to ensure that the heart didn't collapse in the papier-mâché process.

 

 

I began to add the shape of the wings.  Exciting isn't it?  I'm far too tired to throw my usual Hollywood tales into this one... You get the idea behind the supporting wire pieces?  It's a process to create a support structure. It's at this point I was supposed to add a chain to hang it from.  I forgot!

I started to prep the tissue paper, a heavier weight tissue paper than packing tissue.  Using a medium thicker than PVA, I got messy.

 

The white of the tissue paper really makes these pictures hard to look at.

I began to layer the tissue paper on, with a view to patting down and shaping once the medium got tacky.

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Not a very good image.  It's the works camera.  But you can see, to puff out the heart and give it a better shape I wanted to raise the front of the heart so I used cotton wool.

Over the cotton wool I placed a heart shaped piece of tissue so I didn't overload the frame by using more tissue where it wasn't needed.  I also didn't want the shape of the heart to start to distort.

You can see the heart is beginning to take form.  It just needed a little bit of teasing and patting down into place.

Award for another bad pic goes to moi!  It's the white in the images which goes off balance but you get the idea. Layers of tissue followed.

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I wanted to use words and so the first layer was a poem written by Shakespeare.  I used it because of the script font more than the poem, as that was to be the base layer.

 

On top of that the next layer was ordinary tissue paper, bright red, which glares with an orange tint, not sure why.  Maybe my wonderful photographing skills again, who knows. The red tissue paper also released dye, which was a tad mucky.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Another layer of my poison labels.

 

Just to say, this process wasn't done in one day.  It took about 8 days in total, waiting for layers to dry.

 

 

 

The feathers.  Messy job.

 Several layers so that the wings actually look like how I imagine angels wings to look.

 

 

 

 

 

Making sure that the edges were covered so no tissue paper and paper can be seen.

 

Look at those wings!  I was very proud.

At this point I sat it on a radiator to ensure that the whole heart and all its layers were dry.

Final poisoned heart sat on top of my work lamp in the craft room. Looks a bit odd, but that's the picture.  I have asked Teasemade to take a shot of it as this (weirdly) is the only one I have of the final heart.  But you can see the results.

Off for a tea.