"The Scream" has been recovered!

And I am so happy!

Just some mindless "entertainment"

Last night I spent a couple of happy hours with my brain switched firmly off, making fabric beads. I find that when I have a repetitive task like this to do, it's always best to do it during a time of low brain activity anyway. Otherwise, I'm sometimes tempted to try to reach in and extract my brain through my ears!

You can't tell from this photo, but the fabric has a golden sparkley glow :-)



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Beaded pendant

This beaded pendant is constructed around a vintage eyeglass lens! I'll be writing a how-to in the near future.

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A digital piece by my daughter

Genesis

OK, so today really stank. I couldn't even get out of my own way to make anything. Just kept moping about my daughter going back to college yesterday.

I am so pathetic! I promise to do better tomorrow.

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Back to school time!

A few of the members of "the breakfast club"

We took Dani back to college yesterday. So today Nate calls from Guatemala to wish her well. He's not real strong on details!

When I've finished pouting because I miss them, I'll have a few things to post to show you...maybe tomorrow...

(Dead) Lily of the Mountain

(Dead) Lily of the Mountain

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Another winner from my friend Derek

You can read all about this piece, and how Derek created it here.

Wedding dress winners

The catch? They're all made of toilet paper!

Wedding Dress contest winners

Rumor has it...

...that our collaborative necklace has gone to a reunion in California! Next stop, Washington state, I believe. And then on to the great state of Texas!








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Run, don't walk!

Go feast your eyes on the beautiful winners of Lapidary Journal's 2006 Bead Arts Awards and also the Jewelry Arts Awards! Awesomely gorgeous stuff.

Want to consider entering 2007's contests? All the info is here, and the deadlines are March and April. Start dreaming up your entry now...




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Broken Angel

These are images from a previous vacation (back in the spring). I promise to get back to jewelry very very soon!

Broken Angel

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Another image from vacay

Fading Away

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Wow, my blog's a mess!

Almost every post I sent while I was on vacation has these little boxes that are looking for FireFox plugins! I'm sorry for the mess ~ I haven't been able to find an easy way to rid myself of them. I was using my father's computer, and evidently it's set up slightly differently :-(

What I did on my summer vacation

Mostly ate! And read. Mike fished. It was great...enough said!

Mom's birthday

I made this composite last night from some of our vacation images. Please don't ask me what it means...I don't know!

Fish Points North

This is what Dani was busy doing while we were gone. It's latex, bondo, fiberglass, fabric, etc etc etc. Just wait till you see the wings! She's heading back to art school in a week. I'm going to miss her a lot :-(

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Another for fall

Native Dance

There are some more great fall colors in this necklace. Right now it is busy being photographed for Belle Armoire, the wearable arts magazine. I'm hoping it comes home in time for some of my up-coming fall activities!

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Some great fall colors

Crystal Cascade

Crystals, pearls, and Bali sterling silver

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Facts are leaking out my head...

Silver Lake

So, I'm sitting by the side of this beautiful lake with my parents and my husband, just letting the cares of the world roll over me. Then, it occurs to me that I have driven here, well over 400 miles, and left my mother's birthday present back in Massachusetts. Drat! I mention it to my father, and he tells me that he can't find where he hid the present he bought for her!!

Words fail me...




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"Night Sky" completed

Night Sky

I added spiral stitched strands in purple and blue iris seed beads to the wired lampwork piece. Sterling silver cones, chain, and hook finish it off! I've got an easy tutorial on simple spiral stitch, and there are dozens of variations that you can try.

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"Night Sky" lampwork beads

These are some lampwork glass beads that I made quite some time ago. While I'm on vacation, I thought I'd figure out something to do with them! As you can see, they're already wired together with heavy gauge sterling silver wire. I didn't exactly bring my whole bead cabinet with me, so I hope that what I brought will be appropriate!

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Time for a little R & R

A little R & R with my sweetie. Yesterday was our 22nd wedding anniversary. Today we're leaving for a week of fishing, reading, and relaxing. Don't worry though ~ I've got a backlog of things that I need to post about this week!

Here's a flower I won't be planting!

Brooklyn Botanical Garden's corpse flower

I love flowers of all sorts, and often look at them for color combos and jewelry shapes. But the corpse flower is one I can skip!

The rest of the story from Nate

Arthuro & Alicia


Angel

These kids are all from one family, and they decided quite awhile ago that they were not interested in being adopted, thank you very much. Their plan was to stay behind at the orphanage while everyone else went off to their new families.

Until they met the right family, that is.

Nate told me yesterday on the phone that a wonderful family had come to visit, and these three little hold-outs had fallen in love. As had the family. They live in Florida, and have already started the process of home studies and all the junk you have to go through to be able to adopt. We hope that the paperwork and court dates for the kids will go smoothly and fast!

High summer is here

Sunflowers

Everywhere I drive through my small New England town, I see sunflowers! I made this beaded piece last year to celebrate this time of year ~ late summer is one of my favorite times, with the bittersweet passing of the season.

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Some fabulous news from Nate!

Edwin

Edwin, the oldest boy at the orphanage where my son Nate works turned 16 on August first. As of that date, he would be unadoptable, according to Guatemalan law. So of course, the courts were dragging their heels, hoping for bribe money. In late July we were all still hoping and praying that Edwin's paperwork would be done on time, and I've been frantic for news. Can you imagine? There's a family here in the States with hearts so big that they are adopting a SIXTEEN YEAR OLD!!!

Well, Nate finally was able to call this afternoon, and he told me that as of July 31, Edwin's paperwork was finished! Joyous day!!

I'll have another good story for you tomorrow, as soon as I get their pictures online :-)

Here's another shot

Here's a better view of our collaborative charm necklace ~ you can see how it all hangs together, so to speak! There are nine of us who now each need a turn to wear it and share our photos. Then it will return to me and we will auction it off for charity.

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Jade from Costa Rica

Jade necklace

This pendant is a piece of jade from Costa Rica. My father visited this beautiful country many many years ago when he was a professor at Penn State University (In geophysics. Is it any wonder I married a physicist?) I'm delighted to say that I dug it up recently from a box of treasures from my youth. Here it is, mixed with African jade, white bamboo coral, and vermeil.

Does anyone know if the carvings mean anything?

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The collaborative necklace starts its rounds!

A Charmed Life!

So, I thought my turn to wear the necklace would be last, but an opportunity came up on Saturday, and I couldn't pass it by! My friend Debbie invited me to go with her to an art quilt show in Lowell Massachusetts. Lowell is an old mill city, and the particular building we visited was a converted mill. It is now 5 stories of...artist studios! All different shapes and sizes and contents! It was phenomenal. The show we went to see was a collaborative quilt and fiber art project by some ladies who picked a different quotation each month or so and then made a fiber piece in a pre-determined size that was inspired by the quote. We had such a great time looking at all their work, and afterwards we wandered through the building to check out some of the other open studios.

Anyway, a kind of cool thing happened. Even before we got upstairs to the show, a woman stopped us on the stairs and said, "Now, you can't just walk right by me when you're wearing a necklace that looks like that!" So we stopped and I briefly told her the story of the piece. She was very enthusiastic about it. When we got upstairs and found our show, the ladies who
were currently "on duty," so to speak, also jumped up and ran over to see the necklace! The one we had talked to on the stairs came in just at that moment and said, "You've all got to hear about this necklace. Tell them!" How cool is that?

So, the necklace went out on Monday to California to my friend Wendy. She's going to wear it to her husband's class reunion. I can't wait to see that picture!

We've got to start discussing where the proceeds will go when we auction this piece off after its travels are over. :-)



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Fall colors and style guide

Predictions

Lascaux

"Lascaux"

Handmade fabric beads (muslin, walnut ink, acrylic paints), handmade wire spiral beads, ceramic beads, Lascaux cave paintings sealed onto brass dog-tags and wire linked to necklace, dyed to match satin cord. I usually work with glass and stone, so this was an adventure for me!

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My favorite art quote

"The creation of art is not the fulfillment of a need but the creation of a need. The world never needed Beethoven's Fifth Symphony until he created it. Now we could not live without it."

~ Louis Kahn, architect



Does anyone really need another necklace? No, but once you see it, you know you gotta have it!

I'm in love

It's a guilty pleasure, because I'm in love with an online character...Chad Vader! Recently, there've been a lot of Darth Vader spoofs that I've admired, including the rather spooky looking Hello Kitty Vader. But this is the first one I've fallen in love with. I can't wait for the next episode. Oh, I hope it doesn't get cancelled!!

Shoes!

The Owl & the Pussycat

I'm going to a quilt show in Lowell MA this afternoon with a friend. She does beautiful traditional quilts, while I dabble in fabric collages and small art quilts. I'm not sure what all will be at the show. So, apropos to nothing, I decided to wear some fun stuff. These shoes are a pair that I painted and lettered last year.

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All Buttoned Up

The other day, I mentioned that "les Chats" was going to be in the Sep/Oct issue of Jewelry Crafts magazine, but I wasn't sure which other piece was being used in this issue. Well, it turns out that it is my interchangeable button cover pin. Here's a look at the pin, made with a shank button:

And here it is with one of the (thousands of) button covers I collected throughout the 90s!

My friend Tammy got the cover with her beautiful glass leaf necklace!!! Way to go!!


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"A Charmed Life"

Over the course of a couple months, a small group of my friends and I have been collaborating on a charm necklace project. I don't believe that any of us have ever met in person, but this project is working towards making us feel closer anyway!

Each participant made a charm in an "ocean" color palette that we all agreed upon. The charms were sent to me in July, and this picture is the almost finished version...I'm hoping to finish it up this weekend, and then the real fun starts!

Our necklace will be making the rounds to each of us. We will each wear it to a special event and have ourselves photographed with it. Those photos, along with a brief write-up on the event will end up being bound into small booklets for all the participants. This will be the first time I've seen pictures of some of these ladies! Isn't it weird how your friends online can be so much more real to you than some folks that you see everyday?

The last stop for our necklace will be an auction! We have not yet decided where the proceeds will go, but that will be a wonderful topic for discussion over the next couple of months while it travels from person to person!





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