Wind-ohhh Charms

Who wouldn't like charms for their window. I had this great idea to take a beautiful fork and add some bead and a chandelier crystal. What fun to have the light reflecting off the crystals.

I started out with these great forks I found at an estate sale. Cut out the center tines and played with bending the outer one. I didn't care for the look since I was not able to get them some what the same. So in the end I cut all the times off and drilled some holes. Letter punched the word dream on each one. Wire wrapped some seed style beads around the bottom and attached my crystal. These were fun to do. I see myself searching out some more old silverware and having one hanging in each of my windows.

i spy a charm

It's been a very unusual winter here in Michigan. With a total snow fall of what we can get in one day. The middle of March is here and we are having mid to high 70 degree weather. Then today I wake up to fog.. fog so thick its scarey. Ok enough of that...

I love charms.. I look at things thinking that would be a cool charm. I have acquired quite a large collection of Art Charms. My UFO (unfinished object) project this week is related to this collection of charms. I put together a necklace.

I participate in several swaps a year. It's fun to see what others come up with for the theme or how they use a object.

Lets play a game of I SPY... see if you can find a charm you may have created for me.

I had received a cloth necklace in a swap. I wanted to use that as my base. I wove it through a length of oxidized silver link.

I mixed my metals. Using mostly silver, copper and black. But as you can see there are a couple of golds in there too.

I attached the chain to the cloth by sewing it and then tied knots. This served two purposes. One to hide the stitching and the other to adjust the overall length.

I'm not sure each charm has found its exact placement yet. I'm sure I will fuss budget around and move one or two.

I wore it to town yesterday and received great revues. I'm sure it will become one of my go to pieces.

Come see what the Ravens brought in...

Last week I had a wonderful opportunity to spend the day with some of my "local" art friends. We took a trip down past Detroit to Monroe to a place called Craft 2000. There I found this wonderful spooky wire tree, that I just had to have. I recently participated in a couple of charm swaps over at ArtCharms, a Halloween and Day of the Dead. I knew this tree would be perfect for either one.

I wish I had taken a picture of the tree before I coiled up the limbs. They were long strands. Which didn't work real well holding the charms up to the top. So I took my large bail rounders and went to town. This also added some volume to my tree.

The Halloween swap was the first to arrive so it has the honor of being on my tree. I am always amazed at what others create. Here are some closeups. You can get an idea of what awesome charms I received.

There is so much creativity in this group. I love to see everyones take on the theme. This was my first swap with them and I am delighted with my charms.

I should add in here.. that I had been looking for something to hang my charms on and had thought about a wire tree, but not really wanted to create on myself. Being the impatient, instant (well kinda) gratification person I am. A week ago I had bought a mini fake tree that was metallic lime green in color. I spray painted in navy blue, then some flat black. A little of green had peaked through. Now I liked this tree and it would do. But when I say this one, it was a must have. Plus I had two swaps coming.. so BONUS!!!!

Now patiently waiting for the next swap to arrive. What will I do with them.. hahaha...

Charms..

Belinda Spiwak over at Crazy Art Girl's Musings hosted a charm swap for those of us attending CREATE. I had so much fun designing my charms. My bird in a nest was assembled by twisting several strands of fine wire. Then I wove the wire into a nest, added some small seed beads for eggs and had this cute little bird bead to sit on her eggs. My flower is created with lucite flower beads that I purchased at this adorable bead shop I found in Downers Grove called Bead Heaven. If I ever get unpacked I will share what everyone created.

My first contribution pages to the Cloth RR

Due to a mailing snafu I received a cloth book months before my turn. Due to the stress of my day yesterday, I decided to go ahead and do my pages and get it out to the proper person. It was nice to have something to work on and get my mind focusing on other things.. So here is the page I worked on for Cynthia.

Life interrupted .... what a week

Where to start.. it's been a creative and very stressful week. First off those of you that know me, it's been a tense week, my son that is stationed in Afghanistan is changing bases, due to several factors. The biggest being that France and Canada are exiting the conflict. So contact with him has been hit and miss. Now onto the big trauma for the week. My dog was severely injured. His under belly cut open. After what Dr. Melissa (not my daughter) thought would be simple stitches turned into surgery. We have no clue how this occurred. We have looked at every nook and cranny of our property, to find no clue as to what has happened.

The creative part of my week. The past week has been doing a blog hop/book tour over at Remnants of Olde. What a awesome hop. If you haven't had a chance to check it out, you should. Find the link in a post further down.

I kicked off the Cloth RR on my yahoo group AlteredWithOutLimits this week. There is 5 of us playing and we will be creating a page for each of our themes. I chose Steampunk.. I will now share my pages. I can't wait to see what the others do with this theme. The images I used for my sign in page are from The Sum of All Crafts

Snowmen

Our version of the CPS snowmen