I just love etching...

I love etching.. and on copper I am in heaven.  I have been looking through my stash of rubber stamps and decided to play and see what kind of etchings some of them would make..

As with all experiments some work and others not so much. I liked this one so much that I put it together as a gift for my mom. Hopefully by this posting it has arrived to her in Florida.

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.

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.

Charms

Faux tin transfer charm

Halloween charm swap....

Charms traded for in several swaps

Charms I have made and traded for over the years. The first picture is charms that I made for a faux tin type class I taught. Second is a halloween swap I hosted with my local gals for halloween. The last picture is a collection of charms I have collected that are created by others.