Floral Surprises and Snakes!

This past weekend my mom and I took our annual trip to the Art in Bloom event at The Milwaukee Art Museum. You'll probably remember how this goes from past years. Basically, people create floral arrangements to represent different pieces of art in the museum. I picked a few favorites to share here, as well as a few pieces of art that I've been meaning to blog about for some time.

So we're starting off here with what I think is a Halloweeny close up of an arrangement. I say it's Halloweeny because of all the orange, the twisted vines, and that Cock's Comb that looks a bit like a brain. I look at this and feel like it could all just slither out of the picture.

All the visitors got to vote on their favorite arrangement, and this next one got my vote. I got such a kick out of the face on that leaf. You don't have to guess how the arrangement relates to the art, do you? I always wondered about that face, like who the person was or what this all means. It feels very 80s to me with all that neon. Something funny I just realized is that the leaf face looks like it's eating some orchids.

These are some beautiful, waxy looking flowers that might be Ranunculus. I'm not sure about the fluffier one.

Now, this was an interesting display! This sculptural arrangement relates pretty clearly to the painting behind it.

I'm not sure what this creature is. A goat? It has large antlers, though. The painting hangs in at least what I call "The Haitian Room". The artist is Rigaud Benoit and the painting is titled Flower Carnival. That's a cool title, although it isn't giving me any clues about this creature.

I thought "Tim Burton" when I saw this next display. Just Tim Burton in general - his hair, the darkness, a few random wacky bits here and there. That painting behind it is the inspiration.

I saw several pieces of art that I thought you'd all appreciate, so I'm going to include those next.

Starting with this ceramic set. Did you know that there's black Wedgwood out there? I didn't. How cool is this? It looks like a tea set that's been painted with modern charcoal paint. Hmm... a little inspiration is forming.

And how cool is this little swamp creature? He was kind of an unexpected little gargoyle on the vessel. I assume he's just someone's idea of a fish, but I'm going to see him as a little swamp creature.

Just as I was approaching this, I overheard a woman say exactly what I was thinking "That looks like Cousin Itt".

Doesn't this metal Cousin Itt cast an interesting shadow?

I've been meaning to share this painting for a while, because I thought you'd all appreciate it. It's titled Outstanding European. Why do you think that is? The artist is Ross Bleckner and it was created in 1989. For some reason I thought it would be a lot older.

I think this is a fairly realistic looking snake. I took these pics through a glass case, but I think they came out fairly clear, considering that.

Here's another view of him kinda sneaking around the back, which is for some reason a little cute to me.

Sssss... This is another one that is newer than expected. This Snake Jug was created in 1991. For some reason, I thought it would be 100 years old. There are two artists listed, Michael and Melvin Crocker, so I guess this was a collaboration?

There's a friend for this snake in the museum! And this one is an older snake. It was created in 1908 by Oscar Spencer. It's titled Snake. So yeah, pretty straight forward.

Looks like its tongue is made of wire.

I took this photo in a room that is made to look like an antique collection of objects a woman has collected in her travels. To my mind, it looks Victorian. You know, the way Victorians collected. I could have taken a photo of many details in this room, but I really liked these lamps. They have a sort of Disney's Haunted Mansion vibe to them.

This one is a little hard to explain if you haven't seen the sculpture. There are a series of glass spheres in a row, and depending on where you stand they show up as bright colored. They're in a rainbow order. And the way the reflection works is, you see yourself upside down in these spheres as you approach them. So that's me upside down taking that pic and my mom coming up behind me.

I'll end with one last flower photo. This is one of my favorites and I might print it out. I like those beautiful orange Halloween roses with the dark edges.

I hope you guys enjoyed this year's trip to the "Art in Bloom" show at the museum! It was a much needed visit with some live plants. Would you believe we had several inches of snow fall only two days ago? It's all gone now, and hopefully we can soon look forward to seeing some flowers actually growing out of the ground!

My four recent Halloween crafts

Have you guys been working on any Halloween craft projects lately? I've been pretty busy cutting, spraying, and gluing the past few weeks. This first project was a quick one, but I love the effect. I bought a pack of 8 little rubber snakes from Dollar Tree and spray-painted them gold. That simple, and I love them!

These squiggly little gold snakes will make nice table scatters on the black tablecloth for the party. I could also imagine that they'd make a neat addition to a Cleopatra or Medusa costume.

Dollar Tree is selling their classic foam pumpkins again, but this year a helpful change has been made to them. See that crease on the side of the pumpkin? The pumpkin is made from two foam halves put together. The mold used to fit together in a way where the line ran horizontally around the middle of the pumpkin. If you were trying to craft with these in the past, you'll know what I mean because it was an issue!

Now with the line going down the side instead, there's nothing to interfere with the design on the front of the pumpkin. So, good job Dollar Tree!

These little pumpkins are carvable. So I drew a face with a pencil and then cut it out with a craft knife. You know one of those knives where you can knock out the blade and there are a bunch of blades behind it? I just looked that up "utility knives" with retractable or snap-off blades. They're super cheap. In fact they're three for $1.00 at Dollar Tree! Can't beat that.

So the knife worked great. I had to score over my design a few times, but since the pumpkin was hollow, the pieces popped right out. I cut that hole in the bottom so I could place this over a candle.

I wanted to go for a vintage vibe, like those old paper mache pumpkins. So I drew some eyes and a smile on paper and taped those inside the cut-out parts. It was a little challenging getting them in there, but I managed.

Lit up, this doesn't look all that different from a real pumpkin! Especially, if I took out the paper inserts. Even the parts of foam that were roughly cut look like pumpkin goop.

I plan to put this little jack-o-lantern on the porch for The Witch Party.

I was really excited to work on this next project! This little wood house was a birthday gift. There's a small light inside that is very bright and changes colors rapidly.

Using some old photos I'd collected of Victorian houses for reference, I painted the little house.

I added a little fence and some pumpkins outside the front door.

Here's the house sitting in a dimly lit room, with its lights on.

This little house gives quite the light show. Here with the lights out, I'll show you most of the colors the lights change to. Any favorites? It becomes kind of a sinister looking house if you use your imagination. I'm reminded of that spoof The Simpsons did years back of The Amityville Horror. Remember the end, when all those colored lights are shooting out of the house?

The last project I worked on was a new hat band for my witch hat. I wanted to do something really bright and fun this time. This year, what's inspired me most in the stores is the Day of the Dead stuff. So I was thinking about the Catrinas you see with the floral headbands.

Each of these bunches of flowers came from Dollar Tree. As it turned out, I only needed five of them. They're super big! I hot glued the flowers to a piece of ribbon and tied it around the hat.

I had the perfect hat model.

The back:

A close-up of the ribbon:

A fun surprise for me was that this ribbon glows in the dark, all the white parts anyway. I realized this when I carried the hat into a dark room and got to see some glowing skeletons.

Something neat about having leftover flowers is that I got to use them in a Halloween floral arrangement. I'll get pics of that arrangement when I have it out for The Witch Party.

Also, I wanted to be sure to share the new Halloween stamps available at the post office! At least I hope they're still available for all of you. I'm not sure how fast they'll move.

I was really excited about these, in part because these are the first purely Halloween stamps we've ever had! The closest we'd come to Halloween stamps were those classic movie monster stamps in the 90s. So yay! These looked great on the Witch Party invite envelopes.

Speaking of The Witch Party, that's coming up this Saturday! So I'll have pictures to share soon.

And I'd also like to do the Halloween Blog Party again this year! So, if you'd like to be a part of that, just send me of a costumed photo of yourself from any time in your life. You can email it here: justineshalloween@gmail.com or to the regular email where you write me. I plan to put up the party post on the weekend before Halloween.