"Altered Vintage Watercolor Set"

This is a bit of a departure from my usual Altered Art Books, but for some time now, I've wanted to alter an old watercolor paint set.  I contacted Trina at The Paper Flea Market and she just happened to have what I was looking for!  My lucky day! 

The first two photos show what the set looked like when it arrived from Trina.

The final two photos show the set after I altered it.

As always, click on the image to enlarge it so that you can see it better.

This was a VERY fun project!

This is the outside of the vintage watercolor set from Trina at www.thepaperfleamarket.com  (Check out her Web site for some really wonderful goodies at very reasonable prices!) 
I left the outside of the set unaltered, as it wouldn't show anyway when opened - and besides, I think the real thing is pretty charming all by itself.

This photo is of the vintage watercolor set as it appeared before altering.  The round pans of watercolor slide in and out on the tin tracks.  Whomever owned this set really used it, as watercolor paint was pretty much everywhere.  I cleaned it up a bit so the paint colors wouldn't detract too much.  Still, some staining remained, but it added to the authenticity.

Pictured here is the inside of the watercolor set that was used as a palette.  I've added vintage ephemera from old advertising that depicts drawing and painting. "Learn To Draw From Home" was a popular ad back in the day. 

Here is the final altering of the vintage watercolor set.  Included are tiny tubes of watercolors that I've collected over the years that were dried up, but I couldn't bear to part with them.  Other old items include an old eraser, pencil sharpener, watercolor brush, and miniature pencil.

RED Tag Board

THE  RED  TAG  BOARD

click on photo for larger view

The RED Tag Board project came about simply because I had so much fun creating the Christmas Advent Calendar Tag Board, and I didn't want to stop making tags.  Being the overly-ambitious type, my first thought was to make a new and different Tag Board for each month of the year, and each month using one of my favorite colors, or color combinations for the tags.  I decided to start with red, my most favorite color, with turquoise following close behind (and no doubt coming up next.) 

Using the same board as my Christmas tags were pinned to, I simply turned it over and added a layer of polyester batting, a layer of flax-colored burlap, and a final layer of off-white burlap.  Then I stapled this down all around the edges, and finally hand-sewed a thin edging of crocheted lace in off-white to hide the staples. 

The tag board itself could display only 30 tags, not 31.  For purists, this means the months with 31 days are cheated.  Nevertheless, somewhere into the project the exact number of days and the idea of a tag calendar was lost, and the emphasis was instead on the display of the tags themselves.

Each tag is a miniature collage using my personal collection of ephemera and found objects.  Making these tag collages is such a fun and satisfying process ~ I'm already eager to begin the next batch.

*Click on the image to make it larger for viewing.