In My Journal

I continue to work on my journal, and wanted to show you a few pages that I have created, and are ready for me to write on. 

Lately I am enjoying how the pages look before I add my daily (or so) thoughts and words, but don't like how they look so much after the words are added.   I am hoping that that will change soon.

Another page

with some close ups.

I am really enjoying drawing with pen lately.  It is something that I actually have not been brave enough to do.  I prefer to draw with pencil and be able to erase things.  Therefore I have made my self sketch in pen, on a painted page in my journal, and I know if I really don't like it, I can always paint over it. 

These sketches are all on one page in my journal, and will probably stay, and so I added a bit of colour to them.  I think they will stay, and I will write around them. 

For some reason I am in a real teapot and cup mood right now.  

And now I think I will go and make a cup of tea. 

What Have I Been Up To?

What have I been up to? 

Well.... although these have been a long time in the making, I have finally finished a few necklaces.

I really enjoyed making them.

and now a few of them are heading to my Etsy shop (selling for $25 Canadian).

Besides making this jewelry, I have been busy with the following not so fun things

• cleaning up the downstairs of our house after it flooded
• missing my computer as it needed fixing (thanks to my nephew in law for taking care of that for me)
• helping my18 year old daughter move out of her apartment, (100 miles away) and prepare to camp for a month
• attend medical appointments (100 miles away) as I still work towards healing
• REST my brain as much as I can, as that is the only way I will heal from this concussion I am still struggling with.

I am still smiling lots and remaining positive, and enjoying many many good things every day. 

Painting Without Plaster - Take Two

I enjoyed painting on my little wooden blocks so much that I decided to do some more. 

When I am not sure what to paint, I tend to end up painting leaves.

But, I love chairs (I know - wierd), so I decided to try to paint one.

I had never really drawn or painted one before, so I practiced sketching them, and then painted this one.   A little off - but I like it that way.

This last one.... and I think it is my last one at least for a while was not my favourite, but when I showed them all to my daughter, this was the one she picked as her favourite.

Good thing we all like different things!

Painting Without Plaster

I have been itching to do some more paintings on plaster.... but with the plaster supply store 100 miles away, and being that I ran out I had to think of another way to do some painting.

So I looked around my studio, and found some smallish (3.5 inch) blocks of wood.   They were pretty rough to paint on, so I covered them with a layer of paper and painted on top of that.

I loved painting on them, and letting the painting travel over the sides.

I loved creating the first one so I decided to make another one.

I haven't done a lot of painting before, but love the look of lots of layers..... and these paintings have LOTS of layers, and took me much longer then I expected they would.

I also really like how the paper gives an imperfect square - and a little bit of depth to the surface.

I enjoyed painting each one of them.

I am no longer in such a rush to get some plaster.

Rusty Wear

A few weeks ago, an old cement shell of a building was demolished.

When I walked by the site, I saw thes lovely bits of rusted metal, and I knew I would have to take them home.

I took the flat pieces of the metal strapping, hammered it, removed some the rust, and.....

made some earrings....

and a couple of necklaces.

 I left the metal with the lovely patina, but have added a couple of layers of paste wax that are well rubbed in. 

I love the story behind these pieces of jewelry.   To know that the metal had 35 years (or so) within the walls or floors and then it became some jewelry. 

These rusty pieces are available in my Etsy shop.

Our snow was almost gone and then yesterday it SNOWED ALL DAY.  We received over a foot of snow. 

 Hopefully I will be able to sit out on my deck again soon.

New Magazine Article

The new edition of Pages magazine will be available very soon, and I can't wait to see it as I have an article in the magazine.

Here is one of the images of the books I created that is being used in the magazine.  Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of them before I mailed them to the publisher, so I don't have more to share right now.

Here are a few pictures of books that I made that are in a similar style to the ones in the magazine.

I can't wait to see the  magazine in real life.

Hand Stitched Luminaries

I have once again been busy making luminaries out of my tea bag paper collection.  I have made many of them before, and have even had an article published showing how to make them in GreenCraft magazine.  (See side column for where I have been published)

I have recently had a hankering to make luminaries that had some hand stitching on them rather than machine stitching.

and so I made a tube shaped one 

that I hand stitched around the top and the bottom

and then I made a square one with stitching around the top and the bottom

as well as down each of the corners.

These are very difficult to photograph showing how lovely the light looks coming through - this picture was the best I could get, but in real life they look much nicer. 

Due to the amount of time these took to make, I will not be selling them in my Etsy store, but I do have a couple of other luminaries for sale there. 

P.S.   Thanks for all of your helpful comments on the previous post.