Winter is over and spring has sprung with lots of inspiration

Hello everyone… Welcome spring and new adventures.

I have been off the grid for a bit. Well, the blogging grid that is. It's been a busy winter. And what a winter it was. I'm going to do a quick catch me up.. so be prepared 6 months in a flash…..

******One quick disclaimer.. At this time I have no affiliation with any products or shared tutorials. Other than maybe belonging to a shared interest group. I simply share this information to pass on knowledge.

Give me a hammer, a flame and a piece of metal and I'm in heaven.

My latest project was been this air chased bracelet. The inspiration came from this tutorial video posted in a metals group I belong to. Kharisma is a wealth of inspiration and energy. It's fun to watch her videos and get all caught up in her enthusiasm . This was so much fun that I have made a few more.

My Mule Team earrings. I am addicted to this process. Sarah Boo's Musing shared her process here. As you can see I did not get the red but love the purple and coral tones I did achieve. I have my notebook out and taking notes. Will be changing up the water (used tap here) to bottled and distilled. I used my MAP torch. Going to try it with butane and propane. Sounds like a whole blog post dedicated to the process.

In my Charming world.. I participated in a bird, a caged bead, game piece, watch parts and a gift card swaps. At one point this was sitting on my bench.

Up close and personal… charms, charms, charms…. Fabulous swaps and so much fun.

Lucky Squirrel white shrink plastic,  sharpie pen and rubbing alcohol. I created a faux bone effect with my chick in a dress by Invoke Arts. I wish I could remember what die the bird cut out is. Its a set of two and a fairly new die.. like released the last 6 months.

Bird pendant using Spellbinder/SLK Media Mixage  house die cut out of some 30 gauge copper and then embossed with Vintaj's India Archway and Woodland birds dies .

Caged bead swap. I made these brass cages first. Then reread the instructions to realize they needed to be made of silver..  No hurt feelings here. I was really debating on sending them any way. I like them so much. They are created with brass beads, bead caps and jump rings. I colored the center bead with Vintajs Opalite patina.

Caged beads that were the result of following the rules.. lol. Don't you hate it when you are so excited about a project and skim the rules.. Lampwork bead, wire, bead caps and balled heads pins.. Simple as that.

I hosted this swap in a charm group I belong to. Actually all these charms are for ArtCharms yahoo group. The rules for this was to create something from those pretty gift cards we all get. Here was my contribution.. Steak and Shake. It was hard to get a good picture. They are metallic and holographic. Plus of I loved that 50's feel.

 This was such an amazing swap. I will have to ask if I can share some of the others creations. I was totally amazed and what others created.

Game piece swap. Above in the tray is a pile of space ships. Those came from a game my boys had and I just couldn't get rid of them. Below monopoly. I used wooden house shapes and covered them with monopoly chance and community chest cards and then sealed them. Each one is different. Again another fun swap.

Last but not least.. watch parts. I just finished these up. This one was a struggle for me. I have many prototypes. Shrink plastic which I ran through my printer and then used watch gears.

Well folks that does it for now. Many, many more things to share and on the bench. But this turned out to be a long post. I just couldn't stop and or decide what to share.. so went for it all. Enjoy.

What a month!!!! But I guess late is better than never

October is usually my most active month. This year I came down with a flu/cold/whatever thing. It knocked me off my feet for more than a month. I'm still not awfully recovered.. Here is is what I did create.

I had a one for one apothecary bottle swap. I had this glass bell ornament from Melissa Frances, 1962 Embellishments line and thought how cool this would look. The cat/poison apple statue is a big box item that I had in my stash.






The bats are a La-La Land Crafts die that I absolutely love. I cut the bats from Lucky Squirrel black shrink plastic, prepunched a hole and attached the wire before shrinking.

My vampire blood vile is a old watch parts glass tube I had picked up at an estate sale colored with some alcohol ink.














Fairy fingers are bits and pieces from a plastic skeleton I have cut apart and used here and there. The base is covered with some scrap halloween paper and has some moss scattered around. I hope my swap partner enjoys this as much as I have making it.

Here are some tags I created for a swap in my yahoo group AlteredWithOutLimits. These were fun. Took a #8 tag and layers paint and inks to give the spooky effect. This haunted house is a die also from La-La Land Crafts. More shrink plastic bats. The pumpkins are also shrink plastic.

My last project was a haunted house page for another swap in my yahoo group.

I created my page with a spooky word background. Spritzed it with some orange and yellow and stamped a couple of images on. Several Tim Holtz items to be found here..the house, crow and cat and the gingerbread on the bottom. More shrink plastic was used. My little monster in the windows are fake fingernails. Not sure where I found them but thought they would be a fun addition.

Summer time... summer time... summer time

Where has the summer gone. It's hard to believe it is the middle of August already. I have been slacking on posting here. And sigh!!! that was one of my goals this year was to be better.  I have been extremely busy this summer. My mom and her new husband visiting, having my grandkids for a visit, 70th birthdays (for my uncles not me), grand kids birthdays, the list goes on and on..

One of my joys is my camera. Now I have a nice camera and I don't use it to its full potential. And at times treat it like its a point and shoot (shame on me). For the most part the pictures I take are for me.. I thought I would share some with you. I must say the sassy goose was taken by my grand son (13) while he was here on a visit. I love this picture..

I have this butterfly bush. Now this year its not as spectacular as it has been in years past. But my family eagerly awaits for it to blossom each year to watch our butterfly/pretty moth visitors. The monarchs are the trickiest to photograph, they are flighty when a unknown object is moving around but I was able to get this shot.. but believe me it took a bit of snap and wait for him to land again and try over.

Now I know there are "rules" as to what is a butterfly and what is a moth.. we just like the beauty of them. A couple of years ago the bush was huge and loaded with flowers.. it drooped being so heavy with blooms and we had hundreds... yes hundreds of monarchs and other flying beauties. this year not so much.

Today was a bumble bee day. The bush is loaded with them collecting nectar. So many in fact I snapped a couple of pics and got out of there.

Here is one last pic of a visitor to my butterfly bush.

It's all in the numbers..

I recently hosted a swap with a yahoo group I belong to ArtCharms owned by Christine and Peg coauthors of Making Mixed Media Art Charms. I had a amazing response to this swap. I had hoped to get one group of 10 players and ended up with five groups of 10.  I played in four of the 5 groups and here are my charms. The theme I choose for the swap was altered numbers. Every charm needed to have a number or numbers on it.

My first charm is a altered casino dice. From a local casino here in Michigan. After so many rolls they are discarded. The nice part is they came with a hole already drilled through them.  Easy peasy...

My second charms I created from a engineers ruler. You know the ones that are triangle shaped. After cutting the ruler into pieces I then painted the cut edge to match the color of the ruler.. in this case raw sienna. I applied some silver and copper leafing to give it some bling and a little copper wire wrapping for a loop. The silver numbers are a scrapbooking embellishment.. a snap kinda thing. I attached it to the cut surface.

Basic expandable wooden ruler was used for this charm. Cut into segments on the chop saw and drilled to add a eyelet to hold a jump ring.

This charm is a mini domino from a local dollar store. I drilled a hole for a jump ring and also to hang a vintage number. The numbers were from a signage display I purchased from a local meat market. You remember those... the weekly specials spelled out in letters and price.

A vintage white button with another numbered button stacked and then wire wrapped.

Here are some of the other fantastic charms from the participants. This was such a fun swap. And it had such a great turnout of players.

Long time no see.. Sorry, I have been off the grid so long. In late January I took a few steps back with my shoulder surgery. I had been doing so good and then developed a bad case of bursitis. Which laid me up for 7 weeks, serious bummer. I also lost my creative mojo and its taken me a bit to get it back. I seriously haven't even looked at my blog for 4 months. Soo bad of me. I had a posting that should have happened on Jan. 31st.. I prescheduled it and as I see it didn't happen. I will figure out what is up with that and play catch me up.. Enough of that.  Time to move forward. Here's what I have been up too.

This last weekend I had the privilege to take some workshops with Jen Crossley of A Mark In Time over at SmittenDust Studio in Diamondale, Michigan.

The first being this bird house pendant. My main focus of this workshop was soldering. For some reason I have not been comfortable soldering... so says the girl that torch fires like a mad woman. I don't know what was up with that. I learned so much and this class was so much fun. We had a great group that day.

I had another one that night and I still have to tweek it a bit so will be sharing that in the near future. I took saturday off and spent the morning and early afternoon off with my husband doing some estate sale and flea market shopping... so glad he enjoys this.

Yesterday we created these wonderful little bag pendants. "I CAN"T BELIEVE THAT WE MADE THESE LITTLE CLUTCHES!!!!!!" Jen walked us through the construction of our little bag. We tackled some wire wrapping skills and patina rusting. In our creative supplies were some fabulous tin type photos, vintage brass bobbles and beads. On mine I used a little vintage brass stencil I had. I am saving my tin type for the future. I used the stencil in place only because my other creation (too be shared at a later date) has a portrait tin type.

Happy creating everyone.. more to come.

House charm

I am lucky enough to have a upcycle store near me called Learning from Scratch. I purchase all sorts of items from there. In this project it was wooden square beads used as the base of my house.

This project had been in the back of my head for some time. Recently a article in the special issue of handcrafted jewelry inspired me to to pull out my tub of gathered items and create..

These charms will be swapped out at a charm swap I am hosting at my Michigan Altered Book Association (MIABA) meeting on Saturday in Kalamazoo.