This shrine was inspired by the Mexican folk art shrines that honor Maria de Guadalupe and other Catholic saints. They’re usually bedecked with candles and marigolds and photos. I love the look, but I wanted something different.
I started with an old deck of Morgan Greer tarot cards. It took me a while to decide to use one of them, because as a rule I generally don’t like to use anyone’s art except my own. (Kind of limiting for a collage artist, I know.) I chose this card because it was pretty, and colorful, and female, without being too serious or religious. I painted the back of the box red, figuring that if I chose a color I liked, everything else would follow along. I painted the inside of the box red too.
At this point, I hadn’t yet decided if I was goign to use the door on this shrine or on the owl shrine. I assembled the main box part, and painted it with a copper acrylic paint. I painted the roof piece copper as well. Still no ideas, so I mixed some violet acrylic paint and rolled it out so I could use a rubber stamp and give the box some texture. Better, but still a little bland.
By now I’d gotten far enough on the owl shrine to know that the door wouldn’t work on that one, so I started thinking about how to make the door suit this one. I just got some sheets of copper, and I was dying to try them out, so I embossed the backside of a copper sheet and then folded it over the front of the door. It didn’t cover the edges very well, but I had a roll of adhesive copper foil tape that I bought for use with stained glass work. I used more of this tape to cover the linen strips that serve as door hinges.
To finish the door, I went through my beads to find something that looked good as a door handle, and I painted the inside violet to complement the texture. I’d found the magenta silk flower, and decided that looked good in the peak of the attic part, so I glued the roof on and stuffed the flower in there.
Flowers were a good theme, so I rummaged around until I found the poppy seed heads. I’d grown these poppies last year from a package of poppy seeds I bought for making cakes and then never used. They have very large heads. I painted them different shades of red and purple, and two of them I leafed with red-gold leaf. To prop them up, I used the plastic casing from a box of 22 ammo. The plastic wasn’t very pretty, so I wrapped it in magenta joss paper. A little hot glue to put everything in place, and voila!
This is nine inches tall, six inches wide, and two inches deep.
