Go ask Alice....

Here's the thing about Disney's Alice; it creeps me out. Watching it as a child awoke some deep seated anxieties about loss of control that the book just doesn't stir up for me, perhaps it's because the Disney version is so sterile while trying to be surreal (for the record, Fantasia made me feel the same way)...

Anyway, I much preferred the live action versions I saw on TV growing up and the books; maybe that's why I'm so excited about Tim Burton's Alice which opens next month. So excited, that I've been a little busy re-exploring Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Not only have I been going back into the books and re-reading but I've also gotten a little creative with John Tenniel's Illustrations.

Last week I mentioned that I'd gotten out, and had been able to make some art at Blim. Since I've been working a lot with glass and paint (more on that project later); the opportunity to play in Photoshop, work with paper and glue and scissors was like a breath of fresh air.

Generally, the creative work I do is 100% mine; from the drawings and paintings for my embellished cards, ATC's and nursery blessings to the photographs in TMCPhoto. Sometimes you just have to go in another direction to keep the creative momentum going. Making use of Tenniel's illustrations was a great jumping point for me. The Blim workshop was a wonderful opportunity to work with ready made images, incorporating some of the newer things I've been working on at the same time. At the end, I was excited and brimming with ideas, planning another trip to make more!

In preparation for my workshop, I scanned some of Tenniel's illustrations into Photoshop, adding colour here and there, cropping the images into a circular format and resizing them to fit the button diameters available at Blim. These were printed off and put aside for the workshop. I made all my illustrations into 1.5" and 1" diameters just because I like those two sizes. This process took me a full day to do what with the details of adding colour without removing the original lines of the illustrations and keeping the Peanut occupied.

For the workshop, I brought some of the rubber stamps I've been carving, some alphabet stamps I've recently purchased and some markers and ink pads for inking up the stamps. I made use of some of decorative papers and the art and fashion magazines Blim had handy for collage and went to work cutting, pasting and putting my buttons together. Because I had plans to make my buttons into magnets I took the pins off of the button backs before putting the pieces and my art into the machines for pressing.

Of course I went into the workshop with only a hazy idea of what I'd like to do and there were some less than lovely pieces that came home with me (yay for learning!) and also some pretty fantastic ones too. What I liked about the workshop was that as I was cutting and pasting I was also thinking of all the other things I could add to the process. Since then I've carved a few new stamps for more Alice magnets (teacups and skeleton keys were my first ideas) and I'm also thinking about other images too.

Out of the 25 button/magnets that I created, I've put together four sets of 3 buttons that I'll be selling in PeanutButterPie. I'll be listing the first set of three this afternoon and I hope they attract some interest. I know they're already attracting interest on my refrigerator, where I've already put some to good use holding up some of the Peanut's more fantastic works of art.

Are you excited about the new Alice Movie too?