Learning new things

I don't ever want to stop learning new things. I just love learning, whether it's at a workshop or on my own, it's very satisfying and motivating.

So what have I learned? Well last weekend I took a great metal smithing workshop with Shannon Kennedy of Cynosure at the Shenkman Art Centre. Although I've played around with metal for a few years I'd never taken a basic metal smithing course and sometimes found myself lacking in some of the basic techniques. So this course filled in a lot of gaps for me.

On the first day we made these two rings from copper and Sterling Silver.

The second day I made these earrings. My dragonfly's don't match too well so I may make them into necklaces instead. Or maybe I'll just keep them for myself as they are.

I continued on with the learning curve today by working in photoshop elements to make some new banners. As you can see above I did one for my blog. I also made another one for my Etsy shop. I think I'll probably be doing a little more fiddling with them but I'd love to hear what you think of them.

So what did you learn this week?

Wendy

Great ATC meeting

Yesterday we had our monthly ATC meeting and it was long over due since we didn't have a meeting in December and we were snowed in last month. It was wonderful to see those that were able to make it. We did some techniques and played around with embossing folders and die cuts. It's fun to share different ideas for using equipment we already have.

Unfortunately I was so busy playing that I forgot to take photos of everyone's cards. So all I have is the one I traded and the one I received.

This is my own personal Tropical Island. I've been wanting to try out some map making so I thought this was the opportune time. It was a lot of fun using wet water colour paper and different kinds of inks and water colour paints splotched here and there. The hardest part was coming up with some fun names. Can you tell which ones the Tin Man suggested. I was kind enough to give him an Island of his own too. Oh if it looks too big for an ATC it's because it folds up like a map to ATC size.

And here is the beautiful ATC I received from Veronica.

Next time I'll try really hard to get a picture of everyone's ATC's for you!LOL.

Happy Trading.

Wendy

Big changes for 2012

I have some big news for my studio for 2012. I'm moving my studio up from the basement to our living room/dining room area. Yes the Tin Man has finally broken down and allowed me to come out of the dungeon-I mean the basement. I have had my studio in the basement for many, many years and it's a wonderfully large area but it's the basement and feel like I'm in a cave. So needless to say I'm ecstatic about the move. It's going to be a lot of work and I'll try to keep you posted on the progress. Right now I'm trying to empty out the living/dining room to get started on painted, lighting and replacing the flooring. It's like down sizing without moving. How to find a place or purge some things to empty two rooms! Hence the picture of my bookshelf in the family room. I'm afraid I didn't think to take a before picture but trust me it looks a lot better than it did. I found these large 12"x12" cube shelf hard to display things in because I had so many little nicknacks. After getting some inspiration from Pinterest(come and follow me, but be warned it's addictive) I decided to make it more about us, I used lots of books since we are huge book lovers. And as you probably can guess I'm a big vintage and antiques lover so that's the themes I went with to fill up the bookshelf. I tried to put only things that have some meaning to us here. Well having said that the books don't necessarily have meaning so much as being symbolic of books and antiques. So this is what I've been playing around with for the last couple of weeks and yes you can imagine the mess the place has been in during this process.  Now I'd love to get your feedback on my end results...too cluttered, unbalanced, anything at all you can share would be great. Although I'm fairly happy with it I'm sure I'll keep tweaking it some.

Now to get pack up all those things I don't have room for any more!

Thanks for helping out.

Wendy

New designs

Just a quick post to show you some new earrings I've finished.

 These are my first birdhouse earrings to go with my birdhouse necklaces.

 These earrings have a bit of a steampunk feel with a textured brass background and some funky odd beads dangling in front.

 This is one of my wire frame resin necklaces. It's got some shells, a dragonfly and some odd found objects imbedded in resin. It hangs on a recycled Sari silk ribbon and copper chain.

Here is another wire frame with shells in resin. This one hangs on a multi-colours seed bead and chain combination. I hope to get organized and do a workshop for this technique in my studio soon.

Well that's what I've been up to lately. So what about you? What's being created in your world?

Wendy

WOYWW

I love checking out the work desks over at the Stamping Ground. I have to admit I prefer the messy ones. They make me feel better about my messes and I find them quite inspiring. It's true when they say a picture is worth a thousand words. You can see how the person works as well as what kind of work they do and so much more.

Well today I'm going to show you 2 of my work desks, only because it's so rare to see any of them clean so I just had to show you my jewelry desk.

 This is as clean as it gets. About a week ago it was a complete disaster and had been for some time. It was so bad it was actually stopping me from creating jewelry so their was nothing to do but tidy up and do a bit of reorganizing. It wasn't nearly as awful as I thought it would be and didn't even take all that long. So I'm ready to get back at some jewelry creating.

 This is my altered art, painting, art journals and anything else work desk. I have a group of friends that get together at my place once a month for an Artists Date. We bring our art journals and work on different techniques each month. Last night we didn't have anything planned but they decided they wanted to do a Teesha Moore inspired page after seeing one in my old art journal. If you go to the link you can watch some technique videos on how to do this. As you can see I didn't get me page done yet so I still have body parts floating around. Hopefully tonight I can get back at it.

So what's on you work desk?

Wendy

Metal embossing workshop.

I had a wonderful day today teaching metal embossing to a very creative class of ladies at Laura Daubs lovely home studio. It's always so fun and inspiring to see the work of all the students in a class. They have been nice enough to let me share their creations with you.

 Anneke

 Carol

 Laura

Sarah

I was so inspired I wanted to get home and play with my metal again but since I'm teaching the same workshop again tomorrow at Earmark Studio I decided to let the Tin Man take me out for dinner instead.

Hope you're having an inspired weekend too.

Wendy