I Can See Russia from My House

I've had such fun working on this piece.
I received a grab bag of maps from Ebay a couple of months ago. One of North America was just lovely. The colors of Alaska and the surrounding sea really appealed to me. I cut out a chunk of Alaska and coated it with acrylic medium and set it aside. The words "I can see Russia from my house" kept popping into my head. But how does one going about doing a piece like that.

I needed more maps. Paula of Self Taught Artist to the rescue. I now have a map that does indeed show how close Alaska is to Russia.

Now that I have a couple of houses, what next? I need to make the Russian house look more Russian. I need a bear. Where to get a bear? Wait! I have an old children's book of fairy tales. Gotta be a bear in there. Sure enough. He's a bit cute and fuzzy, but he is the perfect shade of green. The house is still bland. I need a roof. I search through my husband's books for some Russian text. He'll never notice a missing triangle.
I can't help but want to look more at this beautiful book. Suddenly, the page falls open to the Henny Penny story -- The Sky is Falling. Somehow that seems so appropriate. But what could be falling from the sky. Certainly not a mere acorn. Missiles! That's what!
A quick sketch and then a new stamp is born.
Where to stamp those missiles? Why, I think they should be the foundations for the houses. And those way cool spikey sequins would look like a cross between explosions and stars in the sky. I also need to make the piece look fuller. I will stamp blue on blue for the bottom. Something not too ugly but gives the feeling of death and destruction. Leaf skeletons. And those fish. They look kind of dead too.
I'm going to add some missiles in the blue "sea". They kind of look like fish swimming back and forth from Alaska to Russia. And I'm going to add my laminated paper buttons with nonsense text on them. Love the circle in circle target feel of them and I need some more texture at the bottom.

So there it is. Not really meant to be a Sarah Palin political piece.

I hope I don't have to do one entitled I can see Iran from my house!

p.s. Some new things are going to show up on Etsy. However, I'm not quite ready to part with this piece just yet.