Puppy purse & Buddha Bracelet

This is my new purse that my husband bought me a couple of weeks ago when I wasn't doing so great health-wise. I love it! It's pink and has puppies on it... what's not to love.

Last night, I worked on a simple bracelet using a Buddha charm I "liberated" from a different bracelet that used colors I didn't like. I'm really happy with how it turned out. I like the cream against the jade. I had to take off a couple of extra beads and then re-string again, but it was worth it to have it fit snugly with no chance of getting it caught on everything!

Fat Book Submission

This is my submission for the Paris Streets Fat Book for the Art & Soul retreat in Portland. I'm still getting used to sending things in for group participation and I worry that I'm not doing enough or that it's not meeting someone's expectations.

The thing is, this turned out exactly like I wanted. I thought it was different and it's very personal to me, which is what I always think of as making the best art. It reminds me of when my husband and I walked down the Champs Elysee for our 10th anniversary. It was a gorgeous day in October and we stumbled into this park in the middle of the city filled with huge pink cabbage roses. It was beautiful and romantic and it felt like just the two of us in the city. The photos are ones taken on the walk down the street and some of the unusual stores we saw. I didn't have room to include the McDonald's which is right next to the Mercedes Benz dealership.. it was two blocks from Cartier and across the street from the hip newly updated drug store where Parisian teenagers hang out late into the night, the more things change the more they stay the same!

Finished Projects & Best Husband. EVER.

So this is what my husband built for me out in the garage... see previous posts about soldering in the house. :) Regardless, it was 106 at a few points this afternoon and he spent all morning and most of the afternoon finishing this for me. He bought me a power strip that runs down the back so I can have lots of things plugged in at once! Also, he screwed down my dremel to the table top so the drill press isn't wobbling when I make holes. He's the best hubby ever.

I've already moved in and started unpacking as you can tell from the picture. He had thought we might share but he's got plans to build his own when it gets a little cooler.

I was able to finish my soldering projects, including the Bettie necklace, now that I've got such a fantastic work space! This gives me a ton more room inside to really go crazy.

Fun little necklace

I hadn't played with my large stock pile of beads in a while so I made this last night and wore it to work today. I loved the little button/pendant and it was even cuter in person. I have a pin that a really great friend gave me that sort of matches it.

This same friend called me today to let me know he's going through a rough patch with his health right now so I'm just taking a moment to encourage you to check-in with friends just to say hi and let them know you're thinking about them. Often I think we take friendship even more for granted than other relationships and it isn't until something happens that we realize how fragile the balance really is.

Anyway, enough of being sappy and maudlin. It's Friday night, go wild and walk quickly with your scissors ... well, briskly and keep the tips pointed down. :)

Out of control with pendant charms

Here are the front and backs of my latest pendant/charms. I like working in the smaller format with tiny collages behind glass. It appeals to my normal instinct of making fairly small but interesting vignettes but I need to start branching out into more collage and altered pieces again just to make sure I don't get too comfortable.

I wore one of my pieces to work today and several people, guys who normally don't notice what you're wearing let alone the accessories, noticed my charm on my necklace and commented that it was great. It was really nice that they noticed... not that I plan my entire wardrobe to show off a necklace or anything. :)

Hope you guys are heading into a great weekend... try to stay cool!

Candy Jar from Swap

This is the fabulous candy jar I got from the candy jar swap. It was a great idea posted on one of my favorite artist blogs and several of us signed up to swap treats and pretty treat jars for our studios. I love mine and my hubby has already broken into the treats while I wasn't looking! I guess that's fair for stinking us out of the house with soldering all morning... it was pretty bad since I had some left over solder dregs on the iron post-cleaning.

Along the soldering dreg lines - I've posted pictures of Abby (& her sister Maya) before but Abby's usually my little shadow falling me around - here she is as I post. She's always with me in the studio room. Today however, the soldering stink was particularly bad and Abby fled in self-preservation. About 30 seconds later my husband appears in the doorway, with Abby behind him, and totally deadpans "Have you heard about how the mines used to have canaries that alerted them to problems..." looks at Abby and back to me and follows up with "your canary made a break for it." I'm still laughing about it, I'll admit you may have had to be here.

Finally, back up and running

I've finally got internet service again. I tried to post last night but blogger and my internet were having issues. I created this piece and love how it turned out. All that's left is to solder.

I do have an important safety tip however. Copper foil, is still foil and can cut a chunk out of your thumb when trying to peel the tape of the piece when you feel the tape isn't lining up just right. Or so I've been warned. I noticed the cut when I saw blood drip on my desk... oops. I hate that because once I know it's cut, then it starts to hurt. It was just fine when neither the brain nor I acknowledged it!

Anyway, I've got a ton of soldering to do but it should go really well now that my irons have been re-tinned. My husband did a great job of making them sparkle again.

Technical Difficulties

We're having some internet issues at home so I've been unable to update anything. The good news is that I asked my husband to get a couple of things for me at the stained glass store and $50.00 later I got a bag of goodies! He told them I was having a couple of issues and they hooked him up. He's a very sweet husband and his b-day was yesterday.

Happy Birthday Sweetie!

p.s. Hopefully, said very sweet husband will get internet fixed by tonight. :)

It's been a while but art has been happening!

I took a little while to get some things straightened out. I had my tests on Wednesday and found out I had to wear a little monitor that monitors (go figure) some activity until Friday so basically I spent last week pouting... probably not my best week. We did take some positive steps forward and joined the gym again and I'm kind of liking having a spot to go to and just clear the mind. It's great to just workout and treat myself to the illicit podcasts (ok, it's the Firefly/Serenity podcasts and I've now just outed myself as a huge geek but it's totally worth it because they're fantastic!).

My husband has been busy at work, luckily he avoided most of said pouting, but he was very sweet and bought me this great bag that I've been coveting for weeks - pictures will be posted - so I took out my mood on my studio and played with my microscope slides. I did more image stamping and am really happy with the result.

I should be back on blogging track this week.

p.s. Since I'm apparently into full on confessions. My movie service has recently sent me Battlestar Galactica season 1... seriously, biggest geek ever!

99 bottle ...

Well, something like that! I'm on a bottle cap making spree and here are a few important safety tips. The dremel that burned up but had an adjustable speed control, well, those should be replaced otherwise you end up using your regular dremel that you use in the drill press to sand and it turns out sparkles will fly. Literally. The grinder on high speed and the bottle cap whole was a little scary. I had to send the puppies out of the room. Now, my very sweet husband would be (if he were home when this happened) pointing out that I could stop during said process and not risk flying metal, sparks and potential fire hazards. Um, right. Anyway, I did not stop mid-sanding and here's a quick look at the plethora of in progress bottle caps.

p.s. I love that the spell check wants to change dremel into dreamily.

Mail Art

Just in case you ever wondered, yes, your mail person does like to look at your mail art. My Dad worked at the post office for years and I would send them colorful letters and cards which he said everyone thoroughly enjoyed. I'm sure he couldn't have been biased in any way! Although, I would be willing to bet that even the postal employees get tired of looking at bills!

This is the background for the address portion of a box I'm getting ready to ship so I hope some people at the post office get a kick out of it.

Paris Sparkles

I was playing with my Staz On ink, which is one of the best things invented, and I stamped the Eiffel Tower onto a microscope slide just to tinker with the look and I loved how it turned out. I was patient (for once in my life) and let it dry for at least 24 hours, even after hitting it with the heat gun, and then added the backgrounds and a collage element for the finishing touch. I especially like how the background paper adds an antiqued look to the slide... completely accidental on my part! It's also handy that it can be worn with either side out just depends on the mood. Now, I just have to solder and add the jump ring but it's much easier to scan without the jump ring. :)

I've also added a photo from our trip for comparison.

Vegas Find

When we were in Vegas last weekend, we were walking around killing time before heading to the airport when my husband spotted boxes sitting in the floor next to an ashtray. Turns out, they were wooden cigar boxes and the woman running the cart was more than happy to give them to us. He stuck them in his backpack and hauled them back to Texas for me. He still thinks it's a riot that my favorite thing in Vegas was the free cigar boxes. I'm a simple girl. :)

Candy Jar Swap

I signed up to participate in a candy jar swap... it seemed like a really cool idea, until I had to think of one! This is what I came up with for my jar and I kind of like. It's fairly simple but I tend to either keep it simple and straight forward or go totally overboard and glitter anything that moves. In this case, I thought less was more. I made smaller ATC's (on actual playing cards) then laminated them. Turns out, adhesive won't stick to laminated cards so I removed the laminate film from the back (keeping it on the front) and then re-applied the adhesive, added a ribbon and am calling it a candy jar!

Hopefully my swap partner will enjoy it, I certainly had fun adding the words and giving you a sense of who these ladies might have been.

Back from Vegas and Happy 4th!

Hey guys Happy 4th!

Sorry for the long break. I had a bad week and then headed for Vegas to recover! Actually, I had some bad medical news, not life threatening but not pleasant either. I have to have an endoscopy on the 19th so I spent a few days sulking (it wasn't pretty!) and then headed to Vegas for us to celebrate our anniversary. It was nice and relaxing but hot and by hot I mean lava melting your skin off would've been cooler kind of hot. I even gambled (sorry, Bo!) slightly but mostly caught up on my reading and napping. We did get to a show and saw KA which was really good but I think Zumanity is still my favorite.

Anyway, I've made a few new pieces and hope to get back to a regular art schedule again.