Fairy Hats - 2006

Altered Art Fairy Hats

Sometime in the summer of 2006, I decided to peruse eBay to see if there was any market for self-representing artists working in mixed media. I found a few sellers who were making pretty good money and even had a following of consistent bidders and buyers. I started off just searching for items with the key words "mixed media", "found art", and "collage" and then became hooked on ACEO's for a while. I made a few of my own, and my boyfriend even caught a little of the bug and made some along with me one night! I was kinda attached to my ACEO's and didn't want to try to sell them on eBay, but I was determined to try to make something and see if I got any interest. From this, the altered art fairy hats were born.

Always on the lookout for yard sale free boxes, I scouted out a bunch of sturdy cardboard yarn cones earlier that spring and figured that I could do something with them one of these days. Noting that a lot of eBay artists seemed to have fairly good luck with selling fairy-related items (and loving fairies myself), I decided to turn the cones into fairy hats. I used several layers of acrylic paints - creating my own colors with the paints I had at the time -, a sealer, ribbons, buttons, artist's markers, bells, craft yarns, and more. I think they all turned out pretty nice. But what OTHER people think is what matters.