Summer of Color 3: Week 2

Well, it's already Week 2 of the Summer of Color 3 challenge.  Once again the choice for this week, Hot Pink and Orange, is a favorite of mine.  It's such a bright, summery combination, which makes me smile!!!  I often use it in my garden containers.  I love to garden and I take a lot of care in deciding what colors go in my different pots which are scattered around the garden.  It's sort of an obsession really.  But, when they're all planted I love looking at them and enjoying the combinations!  I'm a color addict, remember!!

Well, this week I have three different projects to share.  Since I mentioned using the combination in my garden, I'll start with that.

 

This is a pot of Million Bells, little workhorses of the garden.  This is actually our umbrella pot!  Years ago I saw a drawing of a pot full of flowers with a market umbrella in the middle.  I fell in love with it and my absolutely wonderful husband put it together for me!  We've  had it for at least 20 years and it looks very vintage, which I love!  I have a different combination of colors and flowers in it every year. 

 

Next is a bracelet I made to wear to a wedding.  It was a fun beaded bracelet using triangles shapes which are some of my favorite shapes to create to create in beads. 

 

 

I used a mix of colors but all in the pink/hot pink, orange and copper color range.  It's a fun bracelet to wear because it's so cheerful.  Like a party on my wrist!

 

Next is a tag I just finished.  I love masks and I've had a mask stamp for several years and haven't done much with it.  Just looked at and kept it where I could see it, so I could admire it!  That's the kind of thing I do when I love something!!!  Anyway, this week's colors gave me an idea to use it.  I'm really happy with the finished project and I have to thank my very talented daughter, Carrie, and her friend, Maria, for giving me ideas on how to finish the tag. 

 

 

I'm really pleased with the way this turned out. 

 

So, these are my entries for this week.  Thanks again to Kristin for hosting this challenge.  It is such great fun! 

 

 

Thank you for stopping by the blog to visit.  I hope you have a very wonderful day!







Spring, in beads and the garden

These are some of the pansies in pots around my garden.   I plant pansies in pots in the fall and they usually winter over pretty well.  This year, because our winter was so mild, they have done really well.  So well in fact that some of them are pot bound now!  But, they look so pretty, and add so much color to the awakening garden!   I love pansies and they are available in wonderful colors and combinations of colors.

Like these beauties.

They look luminous, don't they?  And, you won't be surprised to know that I always buy orange pansies in the fall.  I love them and pair them with purple, yellow, deep blue or the black ones that are available before Halloween.  I love the way they look in the spring, as a harbinger of the brightness to come in summer.  Here are some of the orange ones that I have in a pot out my kitchen window.

I just love them!

But, all this spring beauty  in the garden has inspired my beading too.  I made this bracelet based on a design I had seen in one of the beading magazines several years ago.  I don't remember which magazine it was, and I adapted the design to fit my taste, but I really love it.

As I recall, the original had rectangular pieces which then had beads strung inside.  I found these oval mother of pearl components at Michael's last year and decided I could use them in this kind of a design.  They look dark in this picture but they are actually a soft turquoise.  I gathered up odds and ends of flower beads, leaf beads, crystals and seed beads and went to work creating a garden in each oval. I strung the ovals and then worked back using fringe stitch in each oval.  I had so much fun creating this bracelet.  It was fun to make and it's fun to wear.  I feel I  have my garden on my wrist when I wear it! Here's a close up of one of the ovals.

This was a fun bracelet to make.  I had come in from working in the garden and I really wanted to continue the gardening with my beads. 

I'm off to work on the last of my Beading Babes projects and finish up my project for Amy's blog hop next week!

I hope you have a wonderful day.  Thanks for stopping by. 



The First Frost

I haven't done any garden pictures in a long time.  But, Tueday morning I had to take some pictures of the frost on the leaves of the shrubs in our garden.  It was such a beautiful sight!  This is the burning bush by the side of our driveway.  The entire shrub looked like it was sugar coated! 

Here is a little tour of the garden covered in the first frost of the season.

Have a wonderful day!  Take inspiration from the beautiful colors that surround us right now.