Go Make Something » Shrine Making

Shrine, Fill or Book?

Lisa Vollrath — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 16:11:59 +0000

Since I’m organizing a matchbox shrine swap this week, I thought I’d take a moment to discuss the three types of matchboxes I’ve received over the years: shrines, fills, and books. There seems to be some confusion about what these things are and aren’t, so here’s my guide:

Shrine

Here are three matchboxes from my collection that are truly shrines. They represent a single idea. When opened, the contents are arranged and glued in place to create a scene or idea. I can look at each one and tell you what they represent: games, Asia, a fairy fern garden.

Discussing what a shrine is, exactly, is difficult. For more on making shrines, try this article on my process.

Fill

Here are three more matchboxes from my collection. Although these were received in shrine swaps, they are not shrines—they’re fills. The matchboxes are decorated on the outside, just like shrines, but inside, it’s a totally different story. These boxes are crammed full of loose goodies. While those goodies may be related to the exterior decoration, they are not meant to stand alone as an art object. Here, the matchbox is simply a pretty container, and the items inside are meant to be used, worn, or played with. In most cases, a fill is not a shrine.

Book

Two more from my collection, also received in shrine swaps—and also not shrines. These are matchbox books. Again, the exteriors are decorated, and the interiors may or may not be related to that decoration. These are meant to be folded out and handled like accordian books. In most cases, a book is not a shrine or a fill.

So, there you have it. When someone suggests a matchbox swap, be sure to ask them to be specific about what they’re expecting to receive. If they suggest a matchbox shrine swap, make a shrine, not a fill—and conversely, if you sign up for a matchbox fill swap, don’t send a shrine.

And, naturally, if they don’t know what the heck you’re talking about, point them toward this article and educate them!

Endangered Wood Cabinet Shrines

Lisa Vollrath — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 15:18:57 +0000

I’ve been buying little wood cabinets at Michaels for as long as I can remember. Sadly, they’ve decided to discontinue the styles I prefer, with solid doors, in favor of styles with openwork doors. Fortunately, they’ve put the old styles on sale for a quarter apiece, and the members of my local mixed-media group have stocked up on them. We’re doing a wood cabinet shrine swap this month, and some of the girls expressed a little angst about it. I told them I’d write up a lesson on how I make mine, regardless of the fact that this lesson will become obsolete in a few weeks when all of you have snapped up the remaining stock at your local stores.

This is the basic wood cabinet, made from cheap pine, and not terribly well constructed. For my purposes, the poor construction is a plus, since I’m going to tear the poor thing to bits. I do check for doors that open and close easily before I buy.

When I was involved in miniature making, what I do in the next few steps was fondly referred to as kit-bashing. This is something most dollhouse enthusiasts love to do: take what the manufacturer gives you, tear it apart, and turn it into something else. Those of you with faint hearts and few hand tools should avert your eyes, and use the cabinets as they are…

The basic cabinets come with little wood doorknobs. I can almost always find something more interesting to use as a knob, so I yank the little things out with pliers.

Inside, there’s a single shelf, smack in the middle of the box. I prefer a box with no shelf, so this comes out as well. It tends to break if I snap it out with needlenose pliers, but I’m generally too lazy to walk out to the garage and get the snub nosed ones that will break it out in one piece. Since I’m going to toss most of this shelf anyway, laziness wins.

Once the shelf is gone, the door swings into the cabinet rather than closing flush with the front. To fix this, I cut a small sliver from the broken shelf, and use it as a doorstop inside the cabinet. The stop is glued in place with a little Weldbond or wood glue, and allowed to dry. Here’s a tip: make sure that once you position the stop, you close the doors and check that it’s in the right place. The first time I did this, I glued it too close to the front edge, and ended up with doors that were permanently open. Not pretty.

Some of the cabinets come with these strange little shaped feet. I don’t love them, so while I’m tearing things out, I pull these off.

A wise man once told me that anything built with wood should be sanded at least once. These cabinets have lots of rough spots, so a little work with a sanding block is usually in order. Try to sand with the grain if you can find it.

I like adding new feet to most cabinets. In this case, I’m adding four identical wood beads, glued in place with a little Weldbond. These have to dry completely before going any further. I usually let the glue get tacky, then flip it over and let it dry on its new feet to keep it from wobbling later.

When the glue is completely dry, the whole cabinet gets a light coat of gesso or primer. No gesso? Use plain white acrylic. This coat is mostly to seal the wood, and keep it from sucking up the paint and adhesive later.

When the primer is dry, it’s time for paint, collage, or whatever your heart desires. This cabinet was destined to be a little Day of the Dead box, so I painted it with bright colors: yellow, teal, purple and lime on the outside, and pink and orange inside.

All those colors needed something to tie it together, so I added dots of gesso around all the straight edges of the box. To do this, just dip the wrong end of a paintbrush into the gesso, and apply one dot at a time.

I use matte medium to apply any paper bits. In this case, it’s a faux postage stamp from Ten Two Studios. I like working with paint, paper and rubber stamps on the same box to create designs, so most of my cabinets end up with quite a few layers on them.

When the exterior is complete, I move to the interior. I like to fill my cabinets with lots of weird stuff. I usually start with rolls of paper and fabric tied with floss or string. I often use little glass bottles filled with glitter or spices. Almost all of the cabinets I do contain a face somewhere. This is the personal part of shrine making—accumulating the items and arranging them in a way that means something to the maker.

Two more finished cabinets:

Larger, clearer photos of these and several more cabinets I’ve made over the years are posted in the gallery on my personal site, LisaVollrath.com.

A Simple Triptych

Lisa Vollrath — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 15:16:56 +0000

I’m working on a new book, on techniques for integrating photos with altered art and collage. After making three samples of simple bleach techniques, I decided to create a triptych to show them off together. The Three Marlenas, shown at right, was the result.

Now, for those of you who are wondering what the heck a triptych is, the dictionary definition goes something like this:

A work consisting of three painted or carved panels (especially an altarpiece), usually hinged together.

There are a lot of examples of triptychs in Medieval and Renaissance art, mostly religious in nature.

OK, enough cocktail party trivia—to make a basic triptych like mine, you’ll need:

Three pieces of 8-1/2 x 11 chipboard. Chipboard is a packing material. If your local scrapbook store doesn’t have it for sale, reach underneath the sheets of loose paper, and you’ll probably find sheets of it. Ask if you can buy them. Alternately, tear the backs off paper pads—yellow legal pads are great for this, and usually for sale in big bunches at the dollar store.
This pattern. Don’t try printing it from your browser—save it to your hard drive, and then print it from your favorite graphics software. It’s slightly larger than letter-sized, so it has to be printed on legal-sized paper.
A craft knife and a ruler
Wide masking tape
Gesso
Waxed paper
Cheesecloth
Cardstock to finish off the back – I used black for mine
Paint, photos, ephemera for decorating your triptych

Print the pattern and cut it out. Trace it onto three sheets of chipboard. Cut out the pieces. I used a craft knife to cut mine, but some chipboard can be cut with heavy scissors.

Line up your three pieces against a ruler, leaving a 1/8″ space between pieces. This space will allow your hinges to move freely.

To create hinges, run a piece of wide masking tape over the gaps between pieces, connecting them together. Be careful to keep your pieces lined up against the ruler while you’re joining them, to keep your bottom edge even and flat.

Flip your triptych over, and run another piece of masking tape over the gaps, wrapping around the bottom.

Fold the hinges to trim the tape away at the tops. Just follow the line of the curve to trim.

Stand your triptych up now, to check that it stands straight and square. If it’s wobbly, now is the time to fix it. Just remove the tape hinges, line up the bottoms against the ruler, and retape.

Paint both sides of the triptych with gesso. Paint the first side, let it dry for a few minutes, and then flip it over onto a piece of waxed paper, and paint the other side. It’s important not to let the first side dry completely before starting on the second.

Let the second side dry for a few minutes, then put a piece of waxed paper on top of it, and weight the triptych with books and let it dry completely. This is to keep the pieces flat and straight—without the weight, they’re liable to warp.

Paint a coat of gesso on one side of the triptych, and while it’s wet, lay a piece of cheesecloth over the top. Paint gesso over the cheesecloth. Flip the triptych over onto waxed paper, and fold the edges of the cheesecloth to the back side, painting with gesso to hold in place. You’ll have to clip between the panels to get it to fold around the tops. Don’t worry about being too perfect with this—the cheesecloth is just for texture, and a little more structural stability at the hinges. Cover with waxed paper and let dry completely.

Now, it’s time for your own personal magic. Paint your triptych, collage it, ink it—now that it’s covered with gesso and cheesecloth, it’s just like working on prepared canvas panels.

Some Thoughts On Shrine Making

Lisa Vollrath — Wed, 13 Jul 2005 15:09:02 +0000

I keep a folder of email requests folks have sent in, and while looking through it this morning, I noticed quite a few of them asking questions about making shrines. Since this topic is at the front of my brain right now, with the year-long birthday shrine project, plus several pieces of personal art in the works, I thought it might be time to throw a few ideas down on paper.

Shrines are a tough subject for many artists, because they are incredibly personal. A couple of years back, I ran a Yahoo group for shrine makers—it was one of the quietest groups I’ve ever experienced. There just wasn’t much conversation, either about thought process or technique. After six months or so, I closed the group, realizing that shrine making was so individual and personal to each artist that there just wasn’t much common ground for us to discuss. We were there because we built shrines or were interested in building shrines—but the process each of us goes through to get to a finished piece was so difficult to put into words, there just wasn’t anything to talk about.

So, here’s my best description of my process, in general terms. Know that this applies to me, and my work, and may be a complete disaster as a model for your own method of working. If you’re already making shrines, and do it differently—don’t change anything. If you want to make shrines, and find this process doesn’t work for you—develop one that makes sense for your own inner rhythym.

Let’s start with my vague definition of a shrine. Most people immediately connect that word with something either religious or contemplative. I’m not an extremely religious person, nor do I consider myself a particularly deep thinker, so in my work, those things don’t usually come into play. For me, a shrine is a self-contained expression of a single thought or theme. That’s a pretty broad definition that leaves the door open for a variety of interpretations.

I usually start a shrine with a single thought. It might be a general theme—nature is one I seem to address over and over again. It might be something very specific—I recently did a shrine to someone’s wedding day. It might be an image—my Headache Box started out with a vision of a clamped baby doll head, and grew from there.

Once I have my jumping off point, I start assembling pieces that might be used in this particular shrine. Pretty early on comes the choice of container, since this usually dictates the size and shape of the contents. I like found containers better than built ones—so, rather than build myself a wood box, I’ll go find one that’s the right size and shape. I do generally lean toward containers with some sort of lid, because I tend to like surprises. Many of my shrines look very different inside than they do on the outside—a prime example of this is Don’t Judge a Book By It’s Cover, which hangs on my living room wall.

With a theme and a container chosen, I really focus on things that flesh out my theme. Using the Headache Box as an example, I looked for things that said pain, or that would convey the idea of hurt. This is the really personal part—what says pain to me may not say pain to anyone else. Sharp, pointy things or the color red might be obvious, but the thought process behind a hornet’s nest or broken mirrors may not be. This part becomes more complicated as we grow as artists, and start developing our own personal symbolism. I tend to blot out any thoughts about what people might think something means, and go on instinct—so, I don’t really care whether broken mirrors mean pain to you, I just care that the broken mirrors felt right to me as I was assembling the Headache Box, and I never once considered setting them aside in favor of something else.

My shrines tend to be pretty packed with stuff. I build a little bit at a time—so, first the major elements are arranged and glued down, and then smaller, less important items are glued around them. I usually keep adding and gluing until the piece feels full, and apply the same weird compositional rules that I do with my collage pieces. I know I’m done when I try to add another piece half a dozen times, and it just seems to throw everything off. Often, I’ll step back from a piece, and feel that it needs something right here—this exact spot is missing something that completes the composition. I’ll generally work that spot forever until I find the right thing to fill it. This is 20 or so years of experience kicking in—my eye is telling me that there’s a dead spot in my composition, and I focusing attention on emptiness rather than the focal point.

OK, enough with the art school stuff—if you want to learn more about composition and leading people’s eyes around on a leash, there are plenty of books on the subject. I won’t attempt to conquer that monster here.

About halfway through the construction process, I usually start thinking about display. How will this shrine be shown once it’s finished? I split evenly between displaying pieces on a tabletop, which requires no extra finishing, and displaying them on the wall, which requires some thought about hanging hardware. Very often, it’s simpler to make this choice before you start filling your container, but sadly, I can’t train myself to do that. If I could just make myself add a hanger to the back of every box before I start, my life would be easier.

That’s all I can think of today. I’m sure I have more to say on this topic—enough that it will probably turn into a book at some point. In the meantime, the majority of my shrines, including the monthly installments from the birthday shrine project, can be found in the galleries.

Matchbox Pocket Shrines

Lisa Vollrath — Fri, 02 Jan 2004 15:06:05 +0000

One of my favorite small projects is making matchbox pocket shrines. These tiny treasures are simple and inexpensive to make, but with some thought, can offer a big message in a small package.

At left is a row of dream shrines I made for a swap on Nervousness. Since matchboxes generally come in packages of 10, I usually do five or ten of one design at a time. The extras always seem to find homes eventually.

I started by emptying the matchboxes of their contents, and separating the tray from the cover. The trays were painted with acrylics, using as dry a brush as I could manage, to minimize warping. I used royal blue and white, not very well mixed together, to create a cloud effect.

While the trays were drying, I worked on the covers. I cut a strip of lightweight paper slightly wider than the tray, and the full length of the paper. I applied glue stick to each surface of the matchbox, and simply wrapped the paper around. If the matchbox has dark cover art, it very often shows through lightweight papers, so I just wrap a second time around. Once the glue dried, I trimmed the excess paper away with a craft knife, leaving a nice clean edge.

The covers of these shrines were stamped with silver pigment ink, and embossed with iridescent powder.

Inside each shrine, I made little full moon faces using one of my favorite techniques. I have a collection of little metal charms, which make great casting molds. I simply pressed some Creative PaperClay into the charms and let it dry. The clay contracts slightly when it dries, and the little faces just fall right out. They were painted with an iridescent glaze, and I added eye detail with a fine point marker.

Once all the pieces and parts were dry, I assembled the shrine. The tassle is simply a piece of metallic embroidery floss, which I ran through the bottom of the tray with a heavy needle. Acrylic star beads and a touch of polyester batting went inside the tray, along with a moon face.

The same technique described above was used to make this Asian shrine. I painted the trays red, and wrapped the cover with red handmade paper, then added a piece of Asian text paper, some gold leaf and a peace stamp. The interior of the shrine contains a small photo of a geisha and a fortune, which were printed on my inkjet, a Chinese coin, and a gold bead with pieces of straw sticking out of it to create a sort of minimalistic arrangement. The tassle is black rayon embroidery floss. I did a set of ten of these, each containing a different photo and fortune.