Driving, Hockey and Earrings

The last few days have been full of driving, watching hockey, and making earrings. My daughter plays hockey on a team 100 miles away, so three days of hockey makes life pretty full. This upcoming week she has 4 days of hockey - lots of hockey and therefore lots of driving means very little time to create. But fortunately for me I have taken some time off of the day job, so I did manage to finish up some earrings.

This is where I have been sitting lately....

and this is what I have been creating..... etched earrings.

Most of the earrings I have made with different shapes of metal

etched with different designs

or script.

On a few pairs I decided to add some beads to the bottom.

And these ones - I am debating whether it should just have the pearl below the metal, or whether I should add a small piece of silk.

What do you think? With or without the silk?

Earrings in the Making

Early in the week I started making some earrings. I etched some metal pieces and then cut them, sanded them, filed them blackened them, polished them and drilled holes in them.

I then needed to make some ear wires for them to hang on. So I cut pieces of 20 gauge sterling silver wire

and with the torch drew a bead on the end of the wire.

I then shaped them, hammered them, filed them and polished them ready to make the earrings.

and here are the 4 pairs I managed to complete.

dragonfly bits

leaves

text and lines

and leaves again.

Lots of fun and YEAH ... I am feeling better!

Not What I Expected

It is Wednesday night in my part of the world. I had big plans for this week, and so far they haven't worked out. Since I have taken the week off of my day job, I planned to settle into making jewellery, - cutting metal and soldering. I like to have big time slots for these projects. And although I have had the time, I have felt under the weather the past two days, and have only done little bits of the jewellery work.

So this afternoon, I decided to work on an unfinished project that was sitting on the table, that didn't need too much energy of any type.

As I have mentioned before I live 100 miles from any stores (right now we don't even have a small grocery store, as it has closed down), and I live even further from an arts supply store (many hundreds of miles). So I buy a lot of my supplies on line. This box of art supplies arrived a while ago... and although the box was not in good shape

All 4 corners were split open. The contents were fine. I was excited to use what was inside, but the funny part was that the first thing I used was the brown packing paper that was all crinkled up inside the box.

I stamped and coloured onto the lovely heavy brown packing paper and today, spent some time glueing to make these cards.

Simple but fun.

And because it looked liked the birds were having a party, I stamped the word celebrate onto the cards.

Catching Up

A few days ago I put up a table and started to put out all of the bits and pieces of projects I have begun but have not finished. I have a lot of them!

On the table was some luminaries in the beginning stages that needed finishing. So I finished them.....

and as you can see there is a big

stack of them.

I even managed to start getting them packaged and ready for the 2 sales I will be at in November.

The packages have the tea bag luminary in

as well as a small battery operated tea light. The luminaries are packaged flat, and when ready to use are shaped into a square, and the light is put inside.

I haven't finished packaging them yet as I ran out of bags (and with the nearest store 100 miles away I will have to wait to get some more). But I am happy to have tackled something on the table. The next thing I am going to work on is jewellery making (or so I think at the moment!)

Jewellery and Birthdays

I love being a mom.

The years have flown by so quickly, and today my older daughter turns 18 and my younger daughter turns 16.

I am so very proud of both of them.

I wanted to make them each a small gift, and so I made the 16 year old this necklace.

Ann Tatum wrote a article in the current Green Craft magazine that had a necklace made with old bits of rulers, which both I and my daughter liked. I was happy to be able to make her one with a '16' on it.

My older daughters necklace is made from a on old worn washer or token of some kind that had washed up on the beach when we were in Bali a few years ago, and a piece of copper that I etched.

Once I was into jewellery making mode, I didn't want to stop.... even though I still have so many paper projects on the go.

and so I played with pieces of leather

and some chunky aged and irregular shaped beads made from glass, wood, bone and clay.

I like the rough look of these pieces.

I do hope to get back to more jewellery making in the next week or so, but for now I have many other projects to finish up.

Photos and Words

I love taking photos, and I love words, and I decided to play with both of these things for a while.

I took a few of my favourite quotes, and added them to some photos I took.

I live beside some large and very beautiful mountains, and yet seem to always take pictures of close up colours and patterns

and things that are no longer living...

winter grass holds some of my favourite colours

and I love when things go to seed...

and also when they are in full bloom.

After playing with the photos and words...

I made some cards.