Laurie's Space Dream

ammonite woman pauses to clear her syphon

I did have a dream the other night that I had tentacles, but mostly I think it would be cool to be an ammonite. You'd have most of your body tucked away in a hard shell, use your syphon to jet around in the ocean, control your buoyancy with gas bubbles, and of course, use your ten tentacles to catch things to eat. (In this version, one of the long tentacles with the pad on the end is modified to have an elbow and fingers.)

The ammonites were closely related to the modern squid, octopus, and cuttlefish. But they are no more: the last of them died out the same time the dinosaurs did.

If you're wondering why ammonite woman's shell is such a shiny gold color, it's because the rock of the fossil was replaced with iron pyrite (fool's gold).

In your dreams

I don't know if it is still my turn for themes, if it is, illustrate a dream you've had or one you would like to have :)  If it isn't still my turn, feel free to simply delete this post :)

The Walls Of Space

Scandal in Suburbia

I imagine this as a combination of Valley of the Dolls and The Stepford Wives.

Feeling the Chill by Sheila Gibson

Is she frigid?  Or is she thinking of another man?  Read "Feeling the Chill" and find out!

The Man with a Dog Head

This is not a "real" book, it was the one mentioned in the movie "Day Trippers" by Liev Schreiber's character, Carl.  It was a story he was working on about a man with the head of a German pointer that sounded very intriguing and I wish it had really been written.

p.s. updated photo - can you believe I finally taught myself how to add text in photoshop?

The Murder at The Vicarage

dead fish blowout

When I read about this week's challenge, the phrase "Dead Fish Blowout" popped into my head and refused to get dislodged. And when I asked myself who the author would be, the name "Carrothead Haynes" popped in. I imagine this as a comic-absurd novel set in the United States, sometime in the first half of the 20th century.

So--You're Going To Be An ARTIST!

My cover for an actual book title I came across in a vintage American Artist magazine.  The type is from the advertisement.  The implements of the trade are also from various vintage artist magazines.  The smiling girl is a found photograph.

Collages by Michael Leigh

Serendipitously I had already amended this old collage for a possible book at Magcloud or Blurb etc. the other day!

This week's theme

Act as if you have been given the dream job of designing a cover for a book, either one already published, or one you would like to see published.

Agrizoophobia

Kathisophobia: Fear of Sitting down

I've gone to Monty Python for inspiration and their Spanish Inquisition sketch.
The Comfy Chair!

DO NOT Share This Image With a Victim of Sfairesphobia

Sfairesphobia ~ fear of balls/spherical objects.

Bowler is an illustration from an ad for Absorbine Jr. in a Saturday Evening Post, October 1937.  The painting by Henri Matisse is "The Blue Nude (Souvenir of Biskra), 1907.  Circular frame is part of a photograph of the Phillips Exeter Academy Library taken from a vintage HORIZON magazine article on current architecture.

Arachnophobia

When I was a very young but precocious reader, I found a story in one of my mother's magazines that scared and thrilled me.  A mother was putting her baby daughter to sleep, singing softly and watching over her.  In a hidden corner of the same room, a mother spider was watching over her baby spiders, doing whatever maternal things arachnids do.  I think the point of the story must have had something to do with mothers of different species taking care of their young; however, I of course completely missed the maternal metaphor.  I KNEW that after the story ended and the human mother had left the room, the vicious spider would creep over to the human baby and bite her to death.  Don't have much love for spiders...

nude with selachophobia

This is a fortuitous theme for me, because I have an out-of-town guest for a week, and so won't be able to make a new collage.  This is one I made a couple of years ago.

There's a bit of a story to go with it. I think all good phobias should come with a story. I'm afraid of spiders: that's my only true phobia. My relationship with sharks is rather more complicated...You have to understand: I love sharks. They are sleek, beautiful, ancient, misunderstood animals who are endangered by fishing all over the world. I founded the mailing list SHARK-L; I'm an activist for shark conservation; I even built a website devoted to all things sharky.

But... (here's the complicated part) I grew up with a large, angry, irrational, all-consuming mother, so ever since early childhood, I've been afraid of being eaten alive. I have this fear that I will be quietly minding my own business--like Pierre Bonnard's wife putting on her cologne, from the gorgeous "Nude Against Daylight"--and this monster will swoop in from nowhere, open her horrendous maw, chomp me into chunks, and eat me up! (I sure hope my mother never reads this... =laugh=)

Cafedepravia

The fear of not being able to get enough coffee.  This wasn't on a list but I know it is real because I suffer from it and I know many others who do as well.

Fears and Phobias

This was a favorite theme of mine on Scrapiteria, there are many lists online with fears and phobias to choose from including this one http://phobialist.com/ or here http://www.blifaloo.com/info/phobias.php

Don't see anything you like there?  Make up your own phobia :)

have fun!

Like The Real Ones

Original pages from 1977 Horror Magazine.

How Long Will It Last?

This was a really fun theme!  I had so many pages to choose from rummaging through my boxes of magazines.  I wanted to do something in my usual style of juxtaposing just two images but I also wanted to incorporate copy.  I used a May 1967 issue of The Architectural Forum to find two advertisements - one for Carrier Air Conditioning posing the question "How Long Will it Last?" and on the reverse was an ad for LIGHTOLIER overhead lighting.  I liked the relationship of shapes in both ads and the words I chose seemed right for the resulting image!

Party Line

This magazine page has been in my collage pile for 10+ years, mainly because I wanted to use both sides, glad to have finally done so.

Gulliver Tees One Up

 The page torn from my most recent National Geographic:

Torn Apart

I can't seem to break free of my style, will try again...

strange sunset

I know Vivienne said "front and back," but somehow from her example image, I got fixated on finding facing pages with images that could be combined. And I got kind of compulsive about it after the first two likely magazines were a miss. When the third magazine served up these two facing pages, I yelled out loud, "Got one!!" and startled the cat.

Is it just me, or does the resulting collage look like one Viv herself might've put together?

shit creek

  by Bob May

City Girl

You can take the girl out of the city but you can't take the city out of the girl.

This week's theme

Take one page of a magazine, scan or photograph front and back.  Feel free to use any imagery from either side for your collage.  I'll go ahead and post the first I've made for this week for a clear example.  I was really excited about all the work posted last week for the Idiom theme!

Sikit-sikit, lama-lama, jadi bukit
Malay idiom: Bit by bit, over a long time, it becomes a hill.

Gloria Took The Double Guarantee of Her New Stardust Bra With More Than A Grain of Salt

Of course we all know to take something with a grain of salt (or pinch of salt, as some say) is to not take what someone says too seriously, there is a possibility that it is only partly true!

Juxtaposition of two vintage ads from Woman's Day Magazine, November 1952.

The ad for the Stardust Life-Insured Bra the bra with ooh! la! la! and the $10,000,000 UPLIFT LINING which guards your health" was unconditionally guaranteed for a full year's wear satisfaction.

A portion of a color advertisement featuring a woman wearing a bra and holding her fine lingerie over one arm and a handful of bleach powder in her hand was from an ad for SNOWY BLEACH - "now science makes it possible to bleach nylon and rayon - SAFELY!

like white on rice

The other night the idiom  "like white on rice" just popped into my head. I've been wanting for some time to make an all-white collage, so this was a great excuse!

Game for the viewer: Find 13 white buttons, 3 white flowers, 2 white books, and one partial picture of a white statue.

I humbly encourage you to click on the pic and view it against black.

F.A.Q.:

What are the white things in this collage? An incomplete list: white ice, white snow, white water, white fur, white feathers, white skin, white fabric, white trees, white flowers, white painted wood, white buildings, white ceramic, white plastic, white stone, white sand, white glass, white paper, white makeup, white diamonds, and white hair (the hair of Lady Gaga, Andy Warhol, and Leo Tolstoy, among others.)

How many individual pieces are there? 186. Seriously! I kept a tally as I glued them down.

How did you keep your energy up through the long hours of making this collage? Black coffee, black licorice jelly beans, and a tall stack of Talking Heads CDs.

What was the hardest part of making this collage? My black cat decided I had been spending too long at my table and too little time with her, so she jumped up into my work space...right at the gluing stage. She walked on all the collage materials and rubbed herself all over my hands and the front of my T-shirt. The hard part was avoiding getting her black hairs stuck with glue onto the collage itself. I know I didn't entirely succeed.

Have you ever used "like white on rice" in speech or in writing? No, I've just read it in books. Sample sentence: "He was stuck on that girl like white on rice."

If this is an all-white collage, how come it isn't, like, all white? All right, that's enough questions.

Right up your street

Going to the ends of the earth

down the tubes

Up to His Ass in Alligators

I'm ba-a-a-a-ck......missed you all, but I see you have done fabulous work this summer, well done!

Too Many Cooks

she's halving a cow

All right, you evil punsters, you! I, too, can play at this game! =flings collage in their direction=

A question to ponder: if this piece were untitled, would you have been able to guess the pun it contains? That might be a fun challenge for a future theme: "guess the idiom" or "guess the pun."

Oh, and the cow is an 8-year-old Ayrshire—the only breed of dairy cattle native to Scotland. Ayrshires were popular for milking contests held in the 19th century.

Going against the grain.

Illustrate an idiom.

This week's theme !

Like A Moth To A Flame