Love, Sacred Hearts, Tattoo Style

I just had delivery of my brand new organic cotton cushion covers and shopper bags last week and I'm super happy to finally see them in the flesh, so-to-speak... Especially the Sacred Eye ones because these designs have been a long time in the making...

In fact it has taken almost a year to get these done and that is because the process to make the heart was so long. I know what I wanted to do but it took a fair bit of organising ...

...it all started about 10 months ago...

I needed to gather all the elements together so I started with a visit to the Kings Castle in Stockholm. I took a photo of a eye in one of the old paintings. Next step, I got some concrete wings from my friend Concrete By Noni and I painted them a rather horrible reddish dark brown and then very gently, with a stiff brush, painted metallic gold paint over, to give depth and an aged effect.

Next step was to make the heart. I found a wooden heart about the right size in a junk shop out in the countryside so I used that as my base and built up a heart in 3D with papier maché

Once I had the basic form, I used self drying hobby clay to give a nice smooth finish, leaving a hole in the middle so I could rest these ceramic hands that I've had laying around for ever.

I wanted to get a nice shimmer on the heart so I painted it with a dark red colour then went over it with a red metallic spray, to get the depth and the shimmer.

Once it was all dry I very carefully glued Swarovski crystals on and I have a great tip if you ever need to glue tiny jewels...use a paint brush, non brush end and put a tiny bit of blu-tack on. Use that slightly sticky end to pick up the gems. The Blu-tack is less sticky than glue so the gems transfer over nicely.



One all the elements were built and painted it was time to assemble it. I used some weird green florists sponge under the heart, so it would sit above the wings and I could put the antique butter knives in like a crown, and flowers and stuff...



And this is the end result of it all put together...

I photographed it, cut it out in photoshop, added some flames and made these lovelies...

And I even made on in a black and white vibe...

I kept the eye bit separate, not glued down so I could do different things with it and that was used in this Eye see You design..

You can shop the new collection here...

It feels so great to have gotten this particular design out of my system and into reality...but is is not the last you will be seeing of sacred hearts in my work. I've used lots of hearts before and I will use them again because I'm just obsessed with them!
You can see my Hearts Pinterest board for more inspo...