I can share this with you now!  This was a piece I did in collaboration with 11 other artists.  My friend and fellow artist, Terrie Lightfoot and 10 other mixed media artists got together to create a 2011 calendar to benefit Go Red for Women & the American Heart Association.  Riches of the Heart 2011 can be purchased at Terrie's Etsy shop $15 from the sale of each calendar will be donated to Go Red For Women, an initiative by The American Heart Association to raise awareness and provide support and information regarding women's heart health.   

Happy Holidays!

It's getting cold and we are having periods of flurries - starting to feel a lot like Christmas!
Hope you are having fun creating and decorating.

Of Towers and Turrets

Well the jewelry pieces are made and the resin poured - I had lots of fun finishing up these pieces and learn a lot about torch soldering and working with metal.

The picture in the second to the left is a painting I did from a photo of my daughter Lea as a little girl - all of the images in the jewelry pieces are various "sweet spots" as Sharon calls them from the Towers and Turrets collage that I made and showed in my previous blog post.  The collage was scanned and then various bits and pieces were cropped in Photoshop Elements and I made a collage sheet which I printed out.  Once I had the shape of the bezels, I chose various cropped sections of the collage to put into the bezel and then placed various glitter and tiny pearl embellishments to complete the mini collage piece.  Resin was poured over top to seal it in.  Since these are a bit large for necklace pieces, I'll make pins out of them.  As for the workshop, there is one last project - an open backed bezel piece that I'll be working on within the next couple of weeks.  Thanks for stopping by!

Of Towers & Turrets

I have been doing a wonderful online workshop, Of Towers & Turrets, with two terrific artists, Deryn Mencock and Sharon Tomlinson.  I have long admired Deryn's jewelry and when I saw Sharon's enchanting faces I knew I must do this workshop which they describe as "an exquisite fusion of mixed media and mixed metals".  We were going to create artwork that we would then use in the jewelry that we would design and make creating one of a kind jewelry pieces!  First I needed to create my artwork to use in my jewelry pieces - making a paper collage on canvas I first created my background~

Next I created the towers ~ I stenceled colored cardstock and security envelopes (yes that's correct!) and built my towers on my background ~

then I inserted faces that I painted ~ I had a couple of favorite faces from the past that I wanted to use, one based on a photo of my daughter, Lea as a young girl.  I added embellishments and now I had my collage! ~

Now on to the jewelry making part of this workshop.  I have wanted to learn torch soldering and now finally it would happen.  Our jewelry theme OF COURSE is TOWERS, so using brass & copper sheets we cut our towers and soldered filigree pieces to them.  We also created rivets from silver wire - oh I love it - and made bezels to solder - I have all my pieces cut out and ready to solder bezel to - I have one piece I've done so far to share ~

and more to come...........

"Featherin' Our Nests"

Today I completed my birdhouse for the Habitat for Humanity NW CT Birdhouse Auction.  On 5/30/10 the entire collection will be auctioned off to benefit Habitat for Humanity.  Wooden birdhouses were available to be embellished by local craftsmen, artists and architects to share their imagination and talent for this fundraiser!  The birdhouses could be functional or fantasy.  What fun I had gathering materials inspired by nature to "feather" my birdhouse!

First I covered the birdhouse with birch bark and then I gathered all types of moss, tree trunk growths and lichen as well as young spring sprounts coming up that looked like little mushrooms to create a woodland inspired birdhouse.

This should be a fun event to benefit a worthy cause!

Nature's Relique

Last Sunday I treated myself to a wonderful pendant & chain class given by Terrie Lightfoot at a great stamp store, Beautiful Impressions in Westbrook, CT.  Terrie is so incredibly creative I jumped at the opportunity to spend part of the day making art with her and meeting some great gals who were there as well.  All the necklaces came out fantastic!  Terrie did a great job leading this two part class so that by the end we completed a comprehensive book and chain - what fun!

The book has oodles of interesting bits.  We started by distressing, metal stamping and coloring a piece of copper for our front and back covers.

       Then we stamped and colored the pages of our book, which included resin paper that we made with old text and broke into bits and pieces as well as mica chips and card stock that we stamped, colored and distressed.  

These were all bound into our book.  Then for the second part of this workshop, we created the chain.  For the chain we made a number of rosary links of our fancy and connected pieces of chain and included embellishments of our choice and finished it off with seed beads to go around the back of the neck.

        

When you have beautiful material to work with you can create a piece that you will love and Terrie's mixed media supplies were perfect for this project.  Thanks Terrie!  I had a blast and lots of compliments on this piece and I'm sure there will be more to come!
Now I'm off to work on a piece I'm donating to Habitat for Humanity - a mixed media birdhouse that will be auctioned off along with many others end of May to support the work of Habitat!  Will post a picture of  it once I've completed it!  Thanks for visiting!

I just completed a tag triptych with the Paper Whimsy Group.  

trip·tych (trip′tik) noun :an ancient writing tablet

of three leaves hinge as a set of three panels with pictures, designs, or carvings, each on a separate leaf, but hinged together.   (Taken from the Paper Whimsy project description.)

The collage is cut and paste - not a diggital collage and I enjoyed working with the wonderful Paper Whimsy images - they are so whimsical and lend themselves to such whimsical fantasy!  I hope my swap recipient enjoyes this as much as I enjoyed making it - I will miss this one as I put it in the mail!  Click on the picture to see it in more detail!

These ATC's are for a LAC ATC swap - the theme was metal - had loads of fun using copper screen, metal sheets, metal plates and hardware and charms.  Terrie who owns Lost Art Creations (LAC) always comes up with the most creative themes

Today I finished a fabric wall hanging for my brother & SIL which I think they'll enjoy.  They took this photo while on vacation awhile ago.  It is in sepia tones and goes perfect with the vintage trim.  Sometime things come together quickly - don't you just love that!  I just need to make a sleeve for the back and find a piece of lattice to slide in and add wire for hanging then it will be on it's way to them!!