Shiny things are good...

Somehow the text for this blog was posted all the way under the pictures, probably because I started it forever ago. Whoops, sorry, you'll have to scroll down. :-)

The top bead on this one is hematite, it catches the light nicely. I like the simple shape of the bird and the little unexpected pop of turning the tear drop bead upside down.

I wear black almost all of the time. It is my favorite color and makes it fun to wear funky jewelery because it sets it off. I made this chunky turquoise and silver necklace to wear one Sunday.

This is one I made for my friend Sherry. It is made out of raw silk ribbon, leather, glass, copper and a hand stamped clay pendant that her friend had made. I love how all of the organic elements came together.

Take one pendant, cute but a little boring

Earring components...cut the loop off and sand it a little bit to bring the copper through the design...

Epoxy the earring onto the pendant, add a little diamond glaze to set it and you have a whole new necklace! (The milky look is the diamond glaze before it was dry.) It dried clear and the silver leaves look like they are floating on the blue.

This is a clear acrylic disk that I used alcohol ink on the back, then stamped on the front. The image seems to float. The earrings are glass beads with a silver cap

Again, playing with the alcohol ink, this time in coppers, with candy bright glass beads to set it off.

A little "twist" ring made from mini pearls with silver spacers and a silver bead dangle on the end.

Feelin' the need to bead :-)

I have a weird quirk (okay, one of many...) I do not like expensive jewelery. I appreciate the thought behind the expensive pieces that I have been given, but I would much rather wear vintage jewelery or make it myself. I do love it when I am given vintage or funky jewelry (wink, wink) My family has always given pieces of jewelery for milestones. We have christening rings and necklaces, pearl necklaces that were given to us for our 13th birthday, etc. I treasure those. I wear the ones that still fit. (Have you ever seen how tiny a christening ring is?) I treasure the diamonds from my grandparents...but I will never wear them. (I do wear the pearls) I never wear gold, the closest I get to it is antique brass fittings. When I was in college, one of the things I did to make ends meet (and feed my Haagen Daz habit) was make jewelery. In fact, I made a necklace for Shon before I even knew him. My roommate was dating his best friend. She was a sweet harmless flirt and kept mooning about our apartment talking about this cute guy from MT. She asked me to make him a necklace. I don't thing she ever mentioned his name, or if she did I didn't listen. I made the necklace and she gave it to him. Imagine my surprise months later, when we met and he was wearing it! Hmm...sounds like it was meant to be! Over the years I have built up quite a collection of beads. I love to open my beads up and create whatever look I want to go for. Several years ago, my sister in law Amy gave me this amazing display/storage case. Just looking at it inspires me! Sometimes I want to get fancy, sometimes simple is best. Unless it is from the 70's or older, I don't usually use plastic, I like to take pieces apart and recreate them. Sometimes as wall art, sometimes as wearable art. Here are some of the things I have been playing with....

Beautiful Berries

So much of creating for me, comes from being inspired by beauty all around us. A well written phrase can move me, light and shadow can bring a smile and the color of berries against a January sky, brilliant orange pops against blue, framed out by a bramble of winter naked branches...well that makes me ache to create. Below are some pictures that I took in our backyard a few weeks ago. Hope they bring a smile to your day too!

Diggin' through the scraps

It seems like I have been working on a pile of Toby pictures lately. I have one little stack of pictures from the time period when I used to do 81/2 by 11 family albums. Unless I am doing a specialty album, now I usually use 12x12. So it has been fun...and a bit of a challenge as graphically I re-adjust to a smaller and rectangular format. I found these pictures from about four years ago that were just fun and quirky. One of my resolutions was to use up some of the older things of in my "stash". I found these Genuine Boy titles from Tree House Memories. I combined them with a journaling rub-on from EK Success. I cut the "Quirky" from the EK rub-on and added over top of the Genuine Boy title. The photo makes the title look like it has a lot of red in it, but I think that the flash from camera made it look that way.

Another resolution was to use up some the the dreaded "scraps" that seem to grow overnight. My goal was to only use two sheets of white for a background. The rest had to all be either from scraps or stash! Digging through the paper scraps added a little interest with color and simple shapes.

I dug out my Heidi Swapp date stamp and the Provo Craft alphabet stamp mymother-in-law gave me for Christmas. (see both below) to add Toby's name and the date. In this case the rub-on said everything that I wanted to about Toby's quirky personality. Remember, you don't have to use every part of the rub-on. I cut it apart, rearranged and GASP! even threw some of it out.

The whole thing was quick and I was please with the result. I love doing "art" pages in my memory books, but I would never get all of my pictures scrapped, if I did that for every layout, so I tend to mix it up. I do 7 or 8 layouts that are pleasing but simple and then go all out on the ones with activities that I am totally in love with or photos that inspire a special idea.

The alphabet stamp and date stamps are fun to use, you can spell things out, use part or all of it. **If you are obsessive about things being perfectly aligned this might not be the alphabet stamp for you. Since you rotate a dial to line up your title, it is very difficult to get it straight. But if you like a funky, eclectic look, they are a lot of fun.