Projects: Altered Puzzles

I've been a busy little crafter lately and I'm loving it! Besides starting an international crafting group with some friends, I've also been doing a bunch of projects on my own!

First let me tell you about this group we're starting because you may want to do the same thing with your crafty friends! We've named ourselves the Crafty Goddesses and will eventually have a website; for now, we're using Skype, Google Groups and Flickr to communicate with one-another. Our small group conducts crafting experiments, where we each receive a package of identical supplies, make items out of them, and then we compare each-other's projects and styles. We hold group and individual swaps and swap series. We also pen-pal in various pagan ciphers, such as Theban and Ogham. (Anyone who is interested in joining our group should

contact me at virgotigergirl@gmail.com because membership is by invitation only. There is a waiting period and a basic membership requirement that must be met before officially becoming a "Crafty Goddess".)

After discovering the artwork of Georgina Ferrans, aka PhizzyChick, I've become inspired to try all kinds of new paper-crafting projects! When I saw her altered jigsaw puzzles and instructions on her Flickr page, I just had to try making some of my own! Luckily, when I went to A.C. Moore they just happened to have packs of 4 kiddie puzzles for only $1.00!! I stocked up on them and bought about 5 packages!

My first attempt, was okay. I love blue, especially dark blue, so that's what I used as my primary color. I quickly learned why all of PhizzyChick's puzzles used paler colors as a base color. Looking at my first altered puzzle, you'll notice that I had to use silver paint (acrylic paint and alcohol inks to be exact) to brighten up the project. I attached a snowflake sequin with a mini silver brad and embossed the word CURIOSITY on one of the middle pieces. I used deco-tape on the bottom piece, decoupaged 2 Norwegian stamps on the right-hand piece, glued a clear plastic dragonfly on a corner piece, and glued 2 bats to the single silver one. The rest of the pieces were either stamped and then painted or just doodled on. (Sorry about the blurry pictures, I couldn't find my camera so I used my phone.)

Now my second altered puzzle is coming along a bit better than the first because I'm using lighter colors. This one is missing two pieces because I'm not done with them yet, but I still wanted to show my progress and the difference between the first darker one and the second lighter one. I decided to more clearly decorate the border of this one and I think it turned out pretty nice!

Starting in the upper left corner (1-10), here's how I decorated these pieces: (1) added a green border and used a sharpie to create a dotted edge, (2) attached a green star with a silver mini brad and glued on another star-shaped sequin and then painted on a few smaller stars, (3) painted a dashed edge, stamped a flying dragonfly and then accented it with hand-painted black ink, (4) missing, (5) attached 2 pieces of deco tape diagonally and added a black Sharpie border, (6) decoupaged a piece of sheet music to the puzzle piece and then dyed it with watered down blue acrylic paint, (7) added a section of a scrapbooking border sticker and then stamped the rest of the piece with black pigment ink and a spiral stamp, (8) stamped and then painted this piece with acrylic paints, (9) missing, (10) decoupaged a section of an old road map and will be adding a purple border to this piece. Whew, that was a lot!

Again, I used PhizzyChick's tutorial on her Flickr page and was inspired by her works of art. If you would like ME to post a detailed tutorial on this blog, please let me know and I'll do my best to post one!