This picture was the one that was supposed to go behind my title LETTING IN THE LIGHT.... but things do not always work as planned, especially for me in computerland, so for now I have a picture that is too big for my title, but I didn't want to leave it blank. I head back to work next week, so creating and blogging will not get as much of my time. I am trying not to let it make me sad. It will work out, it always does.... maybe I will give up sleep.

I was busy making necklaces yesterday afternoon. I bought some beautiful silver leaf jasper and daisy jasper stone beads. I wanted to create a simple necklace that would highlight each individual stone. So I shaped and hammered some metal to hang the beads from and then hung them from an adjustable black cotton cord.

You can not really see the beauty of each bead in these pictures, but their natural designs are each an individual art piece.

I have been working on making some jewelry in my bits of spare time over the past couple of days. I wanted to take some pictures to put on my blog, but again had such difficulties getting good images of the jewelry.

So I tried putting a necklace on our lovely old carving
and kind of liked the way it looked there.
Both of these necklaces have bits of silk tied onto them. I really like texture, and the look of silk and metal together is appealing to me.
I should go clean the house, but maybe after a bit more jewelry making. It makes me sad that these images will no longer be on my camera card after I load them here. I will have to figure out how to change that.

I am having some difficulties loading images here. (this doesn't surprise me) When I load them directly from my camera card, they are then no longer on my card. So I don't want to load images that I really like and don't want to loose.
If I load them directly from an image I have scanned, then they are like the above image not sized correctly. I edit images and scans in word perfect, but these are not accepted as images for posting on a blog. I guess I need to start using a different editing program. Which for me will take some time, as I am not so good on computers.... but I will try.

The above painting is one of the first faces I painted a couple of years ago. I have tried to continue painting faces on and off since then, but probably need to really focus on it for some time if I really want to get better at it. It is not supposed to look like anyone - nor is it supposed to be realistic. The words on it say silent watching.



Here I am with a necklace that I finished today. I started it some time ago, and finally finished it this morning. I have one more week of time off to play at home, and then it is back to the real work world for me. So I better get busy with things I want to make..... and oh there is so many!

This is the latest book that I have made. I like to make things out of whatever I have on hand... the cover uses book board out of an old text book that was heading to be recycled. I crinkled up some tissue paper that came as packing in a box, and dyed it with tea.
I then painted on a picture I took and drew and stamped on the cover, adding smudges of paint and ink.
The inside cover is decorated with the same type of tissue paper, and then the covers are finished with a coating of soft wax that I rubbed into the cover. The inside of the book has 3 signatures that are decorated with small bits of decorated paper - but you can't see that in the pictures. Wrapped around all three signatures is a stiffer sewn page that has ties on the edges. I also took a piece of tea dyed tissue paper and coated it with gel medium to give it stability and decorated it before wrapping it around the signatures and sewing the book together.

Now on to the next project.... I wonder what that should be....

What does one say in the beginning of blogging.... I guess I start with why I wanted to create this blog. I love to create, and am inspired by other peoples creative blogs, and thought this would be a way to record my creatings, as well as perhaps share with others. We will see where this goes.... I am trying to learn to paint faces which I make into cards and put on the cover of my handmade books. Lately I have been also using some of my photographs on the cover of my handmade books. I also make some jewelry, but a picture of that will have to wait until another day.