Jaci Dawn

I am a collector of sticks. It’s a terrible habit, I see an odd-shaped, twisty branch on the ground and I am compelled to pick it up and bring it home. I pick up rocks, too. And interesting baubles. Often, my sticks get incorporated into something creative, but sometimes they just get hauled back out to the yard and tossed into a pile of other sticks I never quite found time for.

That doesn’t narrow down my inventory. It just clears out the ones that no longer spark a bit of “Hmmm…What can I do with that?” or “Wow, that looks magical!”

Take Mr. Leprechaun, for instance.

I painted him years ago, but never quite found the *right* place to display him. He doesn’t stand very well. Last week, I decided he’d look mighty fine hanging on my vintage mirror (which is actually a piece of something greater – I only found the mirror). A little wood glue and – TADA! (Yes, that is an old locker. I stole it from my son when he left home.)

The Dragon and her dragonets took a lot more work to put together than the Leprechaun – he’s just painted on a naturally curved piece of wood.

Her legs and curves are a nice piece of wood, but her head is polymer clay. The nest is a half-shell of a large oyster, decorated with beads. The dragonets are polymer clay, but their shells are dyed silk moth cocoons. Beadwork added as decoration.

Again, she was created long ago and I never could quite figure out how to display her properly. Shutting her in a box never seemed right after all the work that went into painting, gluing, and imagining.

Small cup hooks & a ribbon solved my problem.

All well and good, but the hardest one to deal with has been the shrunken head. I mean, how do you display a shrunken head?

How do you make a shrunken head in the first place? Carve a vague face into an apple and hang it up to shrivel and dry.

The results can be quite amusing. I highlighted the head with flesh-colored paint, beads for eyes, and the seed pod of a tree peony painted to look a bit like a joker’s cap, glued to a stick wrapped with fake vines.

I added the praying mantis and the pink blossoms this year. Don’t freak out: I had nothing to do with the death of the mantis: I found it in that state. I expect she laid her eggs and died of old age and exhaustion. I’ve had her preserved in a wee box for years until a week ago when I decided not only do I need to clean out things around here, but I needed to add her to the shrunken head. She’s heavily coated with clear nail polish as are the flowers (but I forget what plant they are from, only that they stayed pink when dried).

I hung the shrunken head above my computer desk where she can smile at me while I work.

I used a tiny carabiner clip and a cup hook, then a pin to keep her hanging straight.

My husband is going to freak when we move out of this house and we have to fill all the holes in the wall. I’m like a sixty-year old teenager when it comes to hanging things on the wall…