"Love Grows" Multi-Media Sculpture
"Love Grows" is a project that I created as a group of six small sculptures to be sold in a retail store near my house. This was made for Valentine's Day with many different media, including felt, wire, florist wrap, air-dry clay, varnish, hot glue, Rub & Buff, Nail Polish, bamboo, acrylic marker, Sharpie Marker, black card stock, glue, cord, and a half plastic pearl.
In the beginning, I was just creating hearts with air-dry clay. I tend to do experimental art and used iridescent nail polish to paint them. Since they were three dimensional, it was taking too long to dry and any handling of them, even after days of drying would leave a fingerprint in the finish. I ended up scrapping these and making new ones using acrylic paint and varnish. It was a shame, as I really liked how these were looking.
The hearts that I ended up making reminded me of cherries, so I decided to add a stem. I used florist wire. I then added a leaf made of felt, stiffened with glue and varnish. I then embellished them with veins of acrylic marker.
I then wrapped the wire with florist wrap to the wire and added another leaf.
I wanted a way to stand these up, so I placed a wire in the bottom of it, and made an air- dry clay base for the heart. I used a patterned dough roller to apply a texture to the the heart. I used acrylic paint, with a light coat of Rub & Buff to make the raised pattern have an antiqued look.
The bases were still missing something. I decided to make candy hearts. I used a heart shaped silicone mold and filled it by heating a glue stick and filling the mold. I then tried once again to use nail polish, only this time, the attempt worked. I then took the red colored hearts and used a sparkly gold for the stripes and dots. It looked like a piece of candy but it was not complete without the half plastic pearl.
I then added them to the tops of the sculpture bases with a felt heart underneath. I also added felt hearts to the bottom of the sculpture, and added a paper bottom for which I signed my artwork.
And lastly, an arrow was constructed and added from a bamboo skewer, with a black card stock arrow and fletching. The doily is just for presentation and is not part of the sculpture.
