Bling Rings!

Hi everyone!  It's good to have you join me today.  I have some bead talk for a change!  Last month my bead group got together for a Friday session of beading a free pattern.   It's an informal group and we work on patterns that the artists put out for free use.  This one was something I like doing, making beaded rings.  Not finger rings but wheel type rings to be used as components.  Sabine Lippert offered this on her website.  It was a great pattern, called Bling Ring.  Here is what I ended up doing with the pattern.

 

 



I don't often make multiples of a pattern but sometimes a component really catches my interest and I keep thinking of ideas for creating more and more of them!  That's what happened with the Bling Ring pattern.  I started with black seed beads, lime green AB drops, jet AB2x crystals and black AB Delicas.  The first ring I made is to the left of the center ring.  I liked it so much that I decided I was going to do 6 more and string them on a black ball chain.  Yeah, well, when I decide I like something I really go at it!  I decided to use the same black seed beads, Delicas and crystals for all of them.  I used lime green and turquoise seed beads for the start of the other rings, along with more of the black.  I made 4 in the original size, starting with 36 beads.  I started three rings with 48 so that they would be  bigger rings.  I used black beads and black drops for the larger rings and used them as spacers between the colored rings.   Here are some details.

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

I like the necklace so much that I'm thinking of making one in all brights for summer!  It's light and comfortable to wear and I feel I can wear it with almost anything.  Great for me since I don't wear really dressy jewelry enough to justify spending the time it takes to make.

 

 

Thank you so much for visiting today.  I'll be back on Monday with my entry into Tanya's Shibori Ribbon Blog Hop.  See you then!  Have a great weekend.



 

Awake

Hello, everyone!  I'm so happy to have you join me today.  I so appreciate your visits and the visits of those of you who are new to my blog!

Well, we're still waiting for Spring here in the Mid-Atlantic so I decided to just create it in my studio!  Last week, after another bout of sub-freezing temperatures I worked on this wall hanging to lift my spirits. 

 

 

It started with a piece of cardstock from Prima.  I've loved this paper since I found it and so decided to use it as the basis for an early spring project.  The new Tim stamp set, Bird Feather, has become a new favorite of mine!  I love the nest stamp and the feather.  So, I started by stamping the nest and water coloring it lightly.  Then I used the feather stamp in various places.  The bird and branch die seemed like perfect choice to add and I cut both out of kraft core paper and sanded them lightly.  Using the printers' block letters from TH, I painted and distressed the letters for "awake" using Bundled Sage and Tea Dye Distress Paints.  I then inked the edges with Vintage Photo DI. 

 

Once everything was in place I dry brushed white gesso over it to meld the different elements and sprayed it with Biscotti Perfect Pearls mist to give it the effect of an early spring morning.  I attached it to a sheet of corrugated cardboard which I had painted with gesso.  The wire hanger finishes it off.

 

 

Here are some details.  Excuse the poor photos but the weather hasn't been cooperating in the sunlight department lately!

 

 

 

 

 

So there you have it.  Another attempt at coaxing Spring to arrive soon!  Thank you for joining me today.  I really love having you stop by and your lovely comments are so greatly appreciated.  Have a wonderful day!



 

 





A Spring Tussy-Mussy

 

 

Hello everyone!  I'm so happy to have you visiting today.  It's another gloomy cold early spring day here.  This has been the winter that doesn't want to go away.  I'm so anxious to get out in the garden and have some nice warm sunshine to work under.  Eventually that will happen but I'm so impatient for it to happen now!  My impatience manifested itself in this spring tussy-mussy that I spent a few days late this past week making.  Using Authentique's spring paper line and a die I hadn't used before I sat in my studio and worked on spring!!

 

 



 

 

 

Part of the reason I decided to rush spring along was the newest challenge over at the 

the Frilly and Funkie blog.   It's called Neglected Dies and this cone die has been neglected!!  I love cones and when Sizzix brought out this Brenda Walton die,  Faceted Cone, I bought it.  I was going to use it for Christmas cones.  Never happened.  Then I was going to make Valentine cones but those didn't happen either.  Long story short the die sat on the shelf with the other dies and never was used.  Enter the Frilly and Funkie challenge.  I was determined to use that die!  So, everything came together, my desire to use the die, rush spring and the challenge.  And, it worked out just fine!  I really like the die and perhaps now I'll think about using it more often. 

 

I love Authentique's new spring papers and so I decided to use them for the cone.  After I put the cone together and glued on the bottom contrasting paper  I covered a wooden bead with glue and rolled it in Victorian Velvet Distress Glitter  then glued it to the bottom of the cone.   I used a filigree piece that Linda Coughlin generously included in an order (thanks, Linda!) with a Kaisercraft resin flower glued to the center to decorate the front of the cone.  Using the Tattered Florals die and the Garden Greens die, I cut flowers and greenery to fill the cone.  The rose was rolled around a tooth pick and the other flowers had small holes punched in the centers with tooth picks glued into them.  I used a small piece of dry floral foam and inserted the tooth picks into it.  Then I glued 30 gauge Artistic wire to the backs of the leaves so they could be shaped to drape over the edge of the cone and the leaves could be shaped to look more natural.  I attached tooth picks to the bottoms of the those pieces and added them to the foam.  It was easier to make an arrangement with the foam in hand rather than in the cone.  After everything was in place I glued the foam inside the cone.  Once the glue had dried I shaped the wired greenery so it would look natural.   A narrow pink gingham ribbon run though the holes in the top of the cone provided a hanger.  Spring has sprung!!! In paper at least!

 

Here are some details.

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hope you like my little touch of spring!   I hung it in my kitchen window so I could enjoy it while outside my window things are looking a little bleak.    I'm going to enter this in the challenge over at the Frilly and Funkie blog.   Check out all the fantastic entries over there. 

 

Thank you so much for visiting today.  I hope you have a wonderful Sunday and a great week.

 

 

 



The Garden Journal

Hello everyone!  It's so nice to have you stop by.  It's been quiet around here lately but I've been busy still organizing my work space (glad to say that's almost finished!) and this weekend I got out into the garden to start the spring clean up!  It's so nice to be seeing the garden starting to awaken.  And, that thought ties in with the project I'm going to share with you today. 

For a few years I've wanted to make an early spring themed garden journal.  I love pansies and all the early spring flowers.  There is nothing that makes me happier than seeing the first yellow crocuses blooming out my front door.  Well, I finally decided that this was going to be the second of my long unfinished projects to be completed.  It had been sitting around for so long that my ideas for it changed quite a bit.  But, I kept the theme of  pansies and violas.

 

 

I decided to use an envelope book from Graphic45.  That gave me pockets for journaling cards.  The back cover has a flap that comes around to the front for the closure.  I used papers to cover each envelope, back, front and flaps.  The fun part was embellishing each page.  I used stamps, stencils, paint, embossing and die cuts along with pansy themed embellishments of all kinds, including some handmade ribbon pansies and fabric scraps of vintage pansy themed images.  The best way to illustrate what I did is to show you some pictures.  So, here goes.

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

These pictures give you the idea of how I covered the envelopes.  The remaining pages are similar.   I covered each flap with a different patterned paper while using solid colored papers in different shades of lavender for the main part of the envelope.  Using the lavender paper was a challenge for me because I don't use that color very often.  But, I was pleased with how it worked out. 

 

 

The front cover was stamped with a collage of different stamps.  I used a stamp with a meadow of wild flowers and pansies on a piece of torn water color paper which I colored with Distress Markers.  A die cut from the new TH foliage strip die and a stamped label finished the cover.   The flap was covered with more of the lavender paper and a "cap" of green die cut paper.  For a closure I used a beautiful china button painted with pansies that my dear friend Christen sent me several years ago.  I used a variety of  ribbons with paper beads and a Lucite flower and a leaf on the ends.  Here are some details.

 

 



 



 

 

 

 

 

I decided to keep the journaling cards simple.  I embossed three of them and stamped the other three.  That gives me plenty of room to attach a seed packet and make notes. 

 

 

 

 

 

So there you have it.  My long planned early spring gardening journal. It changed from when I first gathered supplies to start it.  I was thinking more dimensional, with more embellishments, but my style is evolving and I wanted a journal that was more functional but still artistic and decorative.  I'm looking forward to putting it to use this year. 

 

Thank you for joining me today.  I really appreciate your visits and your comments.  I hope you have a great day and a wonderful week.



 





 

 

 



Making progress

Hello everyone, and welcome this snowy day!  I'm so happy you could join me.  It is snowing again, but they are assuring us it's not going to amount to much.  For those of us in the Mid-Atlantic this winter is going on forever!!  The weekend was beautiful and I was able to get out into my garden and prune the roses and clean up some of the flower beds.  My hellebores and crocuses are starting to bloom and that makes me very happy.  Now if we could just warm up and stay that way!  But, enough of the complaining about the weather (which gets you nowhere!) and on to the title of this post.

I don't make resolutions at the New Year but I do try to set some realistic goals for myself.  This year it was to finish projects that have been sitting around in various states of completion.  Of course, I had to weed out the ones that made me say "What was I thinking?" and keep the ones I still really liked and wanted to finish!  After that exercise was done I decided to do one a month to keep to my realistic timeline and not try to finish everything in two weeks as I'm inclined to do once I decide to do something!  In January I finished a little paper art project that was from a technique class I took over a year ago with Wendy Vecchi.  This month it was to finish a lariat I had started about two years ago.  This is the finished necklace.

 

 

While I like to design as I go, this was a compilation of patterns from other bead artists.  It started out as a way to use a beaded ring that was a Cynthia Rutledge design.  I decided to use it as the ring end of a lariat.  Of course, then I needed a lariat!  I was just going to bead a spiral rope using some beads from the ring but then I saw this lariat pattern in  Kelly Wiese's book,  Beaded Allure.  I liked the seed beaded stitch pattern and the fringe that used silver as well as beads.  So, using the colors that I had used in the ring, an unusual color combination for me, I stitched the lariat and then the fringe. 

 

 

 

 

 

While the green is a color I use a lot, the blue pearls and golden accent beads are not go to colors for me.  But, I guess I was in a mood to change things up the day I stitched the ring!! It was fun to stitch and I found blue seed beads with a green iris finish to stitch the lariat.   Of course, the fringe was my favorite part of the necklace.  Here's a picture of it.

 

 









 

I love stitching fringe and I use lots of different beads to create pattern and interest in it.  The original fringe from the pattern used silver beads, bead caps and spacers and I kept that part of the design.  From there I added crystals bicones and shaped beads, fire polished beads, seed beads, Hill Tribe bead caps and a few vintage beads.  Its a nice long fringe which adds to the drape of the necklace.  

 

 I feel so pleased to have been able to finish a lariat that I really like and to have been able to put those beads away after a long time sitting on my work table!!  On to project 3!!!

 

Thank you so much for visiting with me today!  I love all your comments and appreciate your visits so much.  I hope you have a wonderful day.

 

 

A Positivity Journal

Hello everyone!  It's so nice to have you visiting!  Today I want share an ongoing project with you.  Astrid MacLean had a brilliant idea at the end of the last year.  She decided to create a "Positivity Journal".   I don't know if you're familiar with Astrid's work, but it is truly beautiful.  Her journals are so wonderfully artistic.  She decided to create a journal in which to record one positive thing that happened every day for the entire year of 2014.  She encouraged anyone who wanted to join in to do so.  I loved the idea because I have been trying to find positive things to be grateful for in my everyday life for a couple of years.  I found that it does change your attitude to look at a beautiful sunrise and say "Thank You".  Some days the positive things are more substantial than a sunrise and some days the sunrise is just too wonderful to ignore.  But, whatever the situation, I found it makes a tremendous difference in my attitude.  But, I had never written any thing down.  I just kept these things in my mind.  When Astrid talked about her journal and showed the first pages I knew I had to create a journal to record my positive experiences.  I have found that creating the journal is becoming a positive experience in itself! 

Here is a picture of the inside cover. 

 

 

 

I love that saying!  It's part of the Typography collection from Graphic45.   I thought it was perfect for the inside cover of my journal.  I used another paper from the same collection as a background and stenciled with heavy body gel medium.  When it was dry I rubbed some Gilders' Paste over the stenciling.  You can see a little of the first page of the journal.

 

 

The journal is becoming a means of trying new products and new techniques.  My daughter shared some of her stenciling tricks and I've had a great time using them and adding some others.  I've rediscovered my love of stencils and all the ways you can use them.  I've gotten to love Gelatos and I'm using pan pastels for the first time.  So, positivity is flowing from the creation of the journal!!  I love that!

 

 

I start by doing a background on a two page spread and then take off from there.  I coordinate the two pages but they are each different.  The journal is already becoming bulky so I'm trying to keep the embellishments flat.  Some times I use little tags or envelopes with tags in them for the journaling and sometimes I just journal on the page.  I think I'll have to eventually start in another journal anyway. 

 

 

Here are some pictures of some of the other pages.

 

 

Another piece from Typogrhapy which I made into a flap that folds down to record my entry for that day. The background used gold Perfect Pearls over DI for some shimmer.

 

Stencils and masks along with a little tag attached for future entries.

 

The facing page with more stenciling and masking and a little folded journaling card.

 

 

 

I have several more pages to share but I'll wait to share those as I  continue to update you on the progress of my journal. 

 

If you would like to join in it's not too late.  Here is Astrid's original post about her journal.  There are no rules and no challenges.  It's just a chance to find positive things in the everyday to enjoy and cherish. 

 

Thank you so much for stopping by.  I can't tell you how much I appreciate your visits.  Have a wonderful day today.





A little bright spot

Hi, everyone!  Welcome!  I'm so happy to have you visit today.  I'm sure you're wondering what the bright spot is.  Well, for me it's Valentine's Day.  Winter is cold and it's often gloomy and since I was a child I've always thought that Valentine's Day was a fun bit of brightness, what with all the red and pink and lace, in the middle of a dull winter.  By now everyone is tired of the harsh weather so we all need a little pick me up!  And, of course, I love to make things for Valentine's Day.  This year I'm making some cards but I also wanted to make something to put on a table in my living room.  Here's what I came up with.

 

 

 

It's a tag, but not a tag!  I used one of the large tags and covered it with Authentique's Valentine paper for this year.  I always love their holiday themed collections. I inked the edges with Vintage Photo DI.  The banner was part of the paper's design.  I cut out one of the vintage images from another sheet of the paper and cut a slit above the banner so I could tuck the corner of the image in.  The background is a 6x6 inch piece of red paper.  I cut a Tattered Doily out of white cardstock using the On the Edge die from Tim Holtz.  After sponging it with Vintage Photo DI I put it down on the background paper and glued the tag over it.  I created a bow from shear ribbon from my ribbon stash and attached that to the top along with two crystal "hat pins".  Using Kaiser Craft Sparkles I tacked down the ribbon streamers and "sprinkled" them around the tag and background.  A little "Forever" sticker fills in the corner.  I cut an easel with the easel die from TH and attached it to the back so it's free standing.   Here are some details.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 





 

 You may notice that there are no hearts in this Valentine project!  Well, that's because I wanted to enter it in the latest challenge over at Frilly and Funkie.  This challenge is to make something for Valentine's Day using the traditional red, pink and white but NO hearts!  That was a challenge I couldn't pass up.  All that red and pink and Valentine sentiment but no hearts. 

 

 

Well, I hope this post is putting some bright color into your day.  Thank you so much for visiting me and for all the wonderful comments you leave for me.  Have a wonderful day.