Monday, December 5, 2016

I Heart N Y– a bears&boxes piece

I am excited to share my latest bears&boxes piece. This one was a special request and I absolutely loved working on it. Let me be frank. At first I wasn’t exactly sure which direction I was going to go with it. After all, New York City is limitless when it comes to subject matter. What helped me the most was knowing it was meant to be from a New York tourist/visitor viewpoint. What follows are the photos I took of the piece in progress from beginning to end.

This is the box surface preparation.  Initially, it was an unfinished wooden box.

Then with my husband’s invaluable assistance, we cut a silhouette of the New York city skyline from chipboard – twice….

I applied them to the front and back of the box for texture.

Then I moved onto the other element I wanted to add to the front – a vintage style postcard in three dimensions.

I painted the piece in several stages.  This blue color is the main one.

Here’s a view of my work table on our porch.  I love working there.  Here you see various parts and pieces underway.

This is a close-up of the textured skyline as you can see by the shadow it casts.

Details are important to me and so I painted the interior of the letters black so they would stand out more and provide a contrast and frame for the images that will fill the letter interiors.

Some more very large letters which will go inside the box.

A glimpse of the postcard mostly complete and the letters finished.

These little pictures took quite a bit of time – not only choosing them, sizing them and editing them, but finishing them and deciding what order I would hang them.

One of the things I love to do on boxes that have a big enough edge is to add text using the transfer process.  Do you recognize what the words are from?

I took this photo of the placement of these acrylic rectangles so I would be able to have a reference when I was ready to adhere them.

These photos will go underneath the rectangles above.

This tiny little cheesecake box was fun to make.

Here are the photos of the final piece.

Front

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Back

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Left side

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Right side

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Entire box opened

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Details in the corner  including a real NYC subway token and a playbill.

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These photos are three dimensional although it might be a bit difficult to tell here.  I printed the background on a matte surface paper and the foreground that was cut out silhouette style was printed on glossy paper.

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One of the most fun things to make was this tiny little suitcase.  I began with an unfinished chipboard suitcase shape which I covered with paper an added the details.  And this little bear does have some things inside it – mementos if you will.

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New York’s ubiquitous street signs – some famous ones.

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And the little bear himself with his I heart NY t-shirt.

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Thanks for stopping by.  I hope you enjoyed seeing how this piece came together!

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