Finding Art Again

Autumn brings with it a desire to work on wood crafts. I suppose it is a habit I got into long ago when I had worked at a fabrication shop.  We used a wood stove to help heat the place and we would get cast off wood from a local door making company.  We got barrels and barrels of the stuff.  Often we picked out the good pieces and made cute little 1980’s country crafts with them. I used to do craft fairs and sold tons of my cat silhouettes, watermelon slices and heart shaped ornaments.

Pumpkins say What?

Recently I came across one of these wooden ornaments and can’t believe I sold any it was so sloppy with its transparent paint showing the pencil lines below.  Of course some were better than others. I miss having this free wood and a band saw at my beck and call.

This year I had a couple of turned apple shaped wood pieces hanging around that I would make fun little jack o’ lanterns out of and decided I wanted to do more of these. Last year I had discovered four of them that I had painted in 1990 and I repainted them for fun.

A trio of Jack o' Lanterns!

I have found out that wood items are much harder to come by these days than in the late 80’s when craft stores had entire aisles dedicated to turned wood alone.  Extensive searches on the internet did not turn up the exact shaped ones I used two decades ago but I did find an apple shape at a local mom and pop craft store I discovered one day.

What are you lookin' at?

A Happy Group of Jack o' Lanterns

I took them and gave them a coat of gesso which I believe seals the wood fairly well and painted them up. I made quite a few.

More happy jacks!

Another project I like to do is to make “candy containers” from pods.  There are these round wooden cup pods on sticks available in the dried flower aisle of craft stores.  They have gone up in price – much like everything else but are still fun to work with.  I cut off the stick which you can get out fairly easy and gave them a coat of gesso both inside and out.  I’m very generous with it on the inside.  I drill holes in the side. Paint up with orange paint and cute jack o’ lantern faces and make sure I give a coat of glow in the dark paint to the yellow parts of the face.  Then I used pipe cleaners to make a handle.

Happy Halloween!

Last but not least I got my hands on Paper Mache skull masks and painted them up as day of the dead or “dios de las muertos” masks.  The first two I have done look okay but I really wish to improve my line work.  It’s been a long while since I’ve played around with acrylic paints.

Flowery Dios de las Muertos Mask

All in all I’ve had a fun time working on my haunted crafts. What do you make?

I've combined my love of Oak trees and Dios de las muertos