Papercraft parakeet

I printed this out a week ago but just now got around to assembling it. The template came from Canon's Creative Park site where there is an astounding array of other things you can make from paper. This took a while to cut out and put together but wasn't terribly difficult and was a lot of fun. I'm amazed by the detail on it!

Big and chunky

It's true that this once-a-week is harder than I thought, and that isn't helped by having my camera out of commission for too many days.
All that whining aside, I managed to get one picture of this big, earthy, chunky necklace that I actually made a couple of weeks ago (is that cheating, to use a piece not made in the week in question?). The jasper nuggets in neutral shades are big, big, big, the colors of a cloudy day leavened by striations of golden yellow in the focal nugget. This one got a lot of attention the one time I wore it to see if it worked.
I think I'll make more of these for the fall.

Perfumed flower bracelet -- small but sweet idea

It turns out that if you sit in a playground full of kindergartners and knit or crochet, inevitably you will attract a crowd of big-eyed onlookers.

Earth Cup owner Natasa put in an order for coffee cup sleeves and I was making crocheted flowers to embellish them. My preschooler and her classmates discovered my flower stash and spontaneously decided to tie them around their wrists as bracelets and offer them up to teacher Lisa Horowitz to sniff ("Smell my pretty flower!"). Ms. Lisa suggested that the flowers could be spritzed with perfume and then they really would smell nice. Genius. We sprayed a light grapefruit scent onto my kid's and she's pleased. I suppose essential oils would do well, too.

Here's my kid wearing her "coffee" (er, steamed milk) sleeve as a bracelet, and a friend wearing her flower.

Book Page Bunting

I spent most of the day today planning for the Art Star Craft Bazaar coming up this weekend. I participated in the first sale of the season over a month ago and I felt unprepared and frazzled, but it was a push in the right direction for how to handle the rest of the season. I organized my goods, set up my table displays, added some new fixtures, made a booth sign, and created this decorative bunting made of book pages!

If any of you are going to be at Art Star this weekend, stop by my booth and say hello!

Hula Hooping

I've been crocheting up a storm lately, working on another teddy bear and a doll. I just need to stitch up the pieces and finish up a few more small things. But this wk's picture shows something else I've been working on...though it's blurry. I'm trying to learn to hula hoop. I know, you're probably thinking *everyone* knows how already? Not so. Out of a few hundred tries I've only successfully hula hooped about 4 or 5 times...so I'm just going to keep working at it.

Collage in progress- Roots

Wow, this posting once a week thing is harder than I thought! I'm supposed to post on Mondays but somehow the evenings keep getting away from me.

Last week I was trying to work on these large paper collages, but wasn't happy with any of them. I found some leftover 5x7 glass clip frames, and decided to tear down the larger collages and see if they would work cropped to a smaller size. It worked out really well for most of them. I have found that if I get to a place where I'm just totally stuck on something it's time to try something radically different!

New Skills = New Product

Soooooo, that whole once a week post kinda got lost as I was preparing for the Maryland Faerie Festival. I have tons of stuff to show, just no time to do it!
A few weeks ago I talked my mom into teaching me how to solder, as in stained glass. I've done jewelry soldering with an acetylene torch, but this was a new kind of animal. My idea was to created glass-based wands with semi precious stones. My apprentice effort resulted in the following:
The shaft is a black 12-13mm dia. moretti glass rod. The stones include two large quartz points - one on each end, a baroque labradorite cabochon with wonderful shiller (the blue flashes), and a collection of tumbled quartz and hematite. It was composed with silver back copper foil and lead free solder holds it all together. This is a solid construction and weight more than it looks like it should. As my very first soldering project, I am quite pleased with the way it turned out.