Wanderings

In case you are wondering what I have been up to.....

I have been spending time doing two of my favourite things....

 wandering in nature

and spending time with this girl. 

How lucky I am!

Yukon Flora Jewelry

My summertime jewelry has been a long time coming,

but I finally finished a few pieces. 

I collected leaves from wild plants growing in the area, and then

used them as stamps to decorate pieces of reclaimed metal. 

1st pair - stamped with Willow leaves

2nd pair - stamped with leaves from Jacob's Ladder

3rd pair - stamped from Yarrow leaves

I then displayed them on cards that included 

the name of the plant I used for stamping. 

I also made a few long necklaces....

...and still have a number of stamped metal pieces ready to make more jewelry. 

But, today I was happy to be able to take these pieces to

 Acacia Vintage  - a lovely little local shop that sells a few of my creations. 

Grafted Collages

I continue gluing together bits of decorated paper to make these collages.

Here you can see the small 3X4 inch creations I shared on my last post,

beside the 6X6 inch creation I have just finished. 

I mounted these collages on wooden box frames 

that can be hung on a wall or displayed on a shelf. 

And here is the finished pile. 

I wonder where my creative muse will take me next......

Layers of Paper

Slowly but steadily I have been working on these small collages. 

They are made using the hand decorated paper I showed a few posts ago, 

and were inspired by the little collage book in my last post. 

I haven't had too much time to create, 

so these came together slowly over the last number of weeks. 

They are quite small pieces . . . . .

that are mounted on 3" X 4" wooden boxes

Little pieces of torn paper - distressed and wrinkled 

layered with other pieces of decorated paper

and eventually secured with glue. 

I really enjoyed making these little collages,

so much so that there are some larger ones in the works.

The Love of Little

I love creating little things that sit on shelves

begging to be picked up and looked at.

I love creating the little collages that decorate 

each individual page in this tiny creation. 

I love when I look down on it,

I see glimpses of the decorated pages. 

The back is decorated in one long single piece. 

When closed a small piece of fabric

is wrapped around and secured.

And its littleness is even more pronounced. 

I know not everyone understands the beauty I find  here. 

But that is okay, we are all different. 

Layered Houses

  

I finally finished my collage house concertina style book. 

It opens up showcasing houses patched together 

with bits and pieces of my decorated paper. 

It can be displayed completely open so you can see its whole story,

or so you can see each two page spread. 

I am still not sure what the stories are of these little houses, 

but I am sure that they were inspired by my recent trip to Cuba

where I loved the aged beauty of the buildings.

 They seemed to have layers and layers of stories.  

 I started the layering of this piece by tea staining the watercolour paper 

and then drawing patterned lines on it.  

I added acrylic paint to the background, and the lines almost disappeared.  

I made the houses and moved them around many times before they found their final resting place.  

In the end the torn tear drop shapes were not part of the inside pages.

The covers are made of book board covered with painted black paper. 

The front cover has this little house.....

while the back is decorated with the torn tear drop shapes.

And to give you the scale of this piece - here I am holding the finished book.