Bear With Me…

I’m updating and redesigning the blog a bit, but I’m quite the amateur when it comes to those things. So if you see something wonky over the next few weeks, it’s  just me playing the Wizard behind the curtain (or maybe more like Caractakus Potts).

A Spring Wreath

Our door has been looking so woefully bare since the Christmas wreath came down – it’s so much nicer to come home to be greeted by a lovely piece of art instead of burgundy sameness day after day. (Okay, it’s not that bleak.)

I don’t like storebought wreaths and I loathe fake flowers, all plasticy and … fake. So I decided to try my hand at a spring wreath, again in paper:

Each petal is hand cut from white or cream cardstock, as are the fringed centers. Glitter and holographic embossing powder coat each petal, giving them a bit more depth and dimension. And each flower (after endless gluing) is finished off with a vintage button from my mother’s stash (and to think, just a short time ago I was going to get rid of the buttons altogether!).

I won’t lie – this took me about a month and two false starts to get it right. But it’s so worth it, don’t you think?

Hollywood Cemetery, 95-96

I have been laid out flat by allergies this year, so for much of the last two weeks I’m been operating under the influence of my favorite snot drug ever: Mucinex D. That stuff is a miracle worker. All that is to say that I’ve had some time on my hands because I’m indoors so much right now.

Last night I came across these photos that I took in college. They were taken at Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia. I think it’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve been, and I spent a lot of weekends there shooting, both in black and white and in infrared (you know, from back in the day where you had to use a manual camera because the LEDs in an automatic would ruin the film). I thought I’d share a few of my favorites with you: All images copyright Silver & Chalk/Megan Van Schaick.

Religion Rewritten Through Paper Cuts

I am in awe. This is probably the most interesting paper cutting I’ve seen in the last two years. Forget laser cutting through books (does anyone else think laser cutting is kind of cheating?), this is… well, I’ll let you see for yourself!

Meg Hitchcock painstakingly cuts letters from religious texts and then reassembles them to create the words of other holy books.

Isn’t that beautiful?

Egg-cellent Easter Eggs!

I am not even going to apologize for that pun – you had to know it was coming!

My super cool aunt submitted these pics of my uncle and cousins trying out the nail polish swirly egg trick.

Payten and Grandpa getting their swirl on.

Christian – can you tell that he’s the precision type? This pic proves that even high school boys can down with some nail polish swirling!

The end result – it really works!

So now tell me – did you dye eggs for the weekend, and if so, did you use this technique? (My mind is now buzzing with all the other things I can dye using this method – custom stationery, here I come!) How would you use this method on other media?