Crown Newspaper Art (Inspired by Ballard Designs)

   
I had so much fun making dresses after being inspired by the giclee prints in Ballard Designs, I thought I would try my hand at it again. 

After I saw these in the new catalog, I decided to do a little research into the artist behind all of this fantastic newspaper art that I enjoy knocking off imitating.

 

The artist is Denise Fiedler.  She lives in San Francisco and has a degree in Interior Design.  She has worked for Marshall Field & Co. as a store designer and for Crate & Barrel overseeing Marimekko.  She launched her first business Bravura, a textile-based fashion and home accessory company.  Her most current venture is paste.  

A lover of books, Denise has taken vintage printed pages and incorporated them into representational images. She designs that which she connects with and moves her, which can be anything from traditional and iconic architecture to fashion to dogs to food to portraiture of people that have caught her eye and imagination.
paste is an artistic endeavor that evolves and develops with Denise's artistic visions. Each piece from paste is an original piece of art handmade by Denise.
(from the website)

She has a gallery of pieces that can be purchased on the website and a listing of retailers where her art can be purchased.  She also does custom pieces of people or dogs.   Her work is amazing! 

Isn’t this Ball jar fantastic! 

Love this Converse sneaker!

Anyway, you just have to go to her site to see all of her work.  I truly am inspired and I wanted to make a crown to go in my bedroom.   I have a thing for crowns.  I guess I just like to feel like I am the queen of my little house. 

I have these king and queen crowns over my bed (from Hobby Lobby, on sale) and I have a few other crownish (is that a word? I doubt it, but just pretend it is!)  pieces in the room that also came from Hobby Lobby. 

This one had chipping paint so it was marked down from $50 to $10.  (I think I can fix that little problem.)

So, I started by printing out a crown  I found  at the Graphic Fairy.  I cut it out and used it as a template for my newspaper art crown.

I cut it into as many individual pieces as I could make from the image.  Then I traced those pieces onto old book pages, magazine pages, and newspaper pages.  I cut out all of my pieces, layed them out carefully and glued them onto a canvas by painting the glue on to the back of each piece and then over the front. 

After all of the glue was dry, I sealed it with Krylon and hung it in my room.  I love my crown.  It turned out just how I envisioned it.  Now, I have some original, unique art hanging in my room and the only money I had in it was for the canvas that I got on sale. 

I hope that if Denise Fiedler were to see it or the dresses I made that she would think that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery and not that I was just ripping her off.

 

I am inspired by her art and have put my own spin on it.  After seeing her dress and making one similiar in style to her design, I made one of my very own design, using glossy, colorful magazine pages. 

After seeing the shoes and gloves in the Ballards catalog, I decided to make a crown.  I was glad that I didn’t see a crown when I was looking at her website.  However, if I would’ve, I still would have made mine.

I think all of us as crafters, artists, decorators, designers in our own homes imitate the styles and ideas of others that we see.  Every one of us can’t have each and every unique original idea.  But we all can take an idea that we like and make it our own by adding our own individual style to it.  I think that is important.  

I think if I just printed out Ms. Fiedler’s images and put them in frames, I would be ripping her off.  But if I look at her art and take this idea she had to paste these printed pages together to create an image and add my own design and style to it, I think I am inspired. 

What is your opinion?  Is it okay to copy ideas we see?  How many of us have made a rosette flower or book page wreath or mod podged something because we were inspired by someone else’s original idea? 



Where would we be if we didn’t? 



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