Beautiful antiquing day.

It was such a beautiful sunny day today that the Tin man talked me into doing a little antiquing after Tai Chi today instead of cleaning the basement. Imagine the arm twisting he had to do for that!
Lucky you I had my little camera in my purse today so I can share some of the sights.

Our first stop found us at Carousel Antiques in Franktown. They are in a lovely old 1832 stone building. Sorry I didn't get my camera out early enough to get a picture of it...next time.

This is what I purchased here. The pewter mold is just a reproduction but I like it and I hope to use it when I do this on my staircase wall. And well how can I resist watches. I haven't made any watch part jewelry lately so this will help me get back at it.

I'm back...had to go help sister Nancy prepare for a stain glass workshop she's taking next week. I've run out of steam for today though so I'll continue sharing my antiquing story tomorrow.

Good night!

Wendy

Dangle charms

I decided that since I had a pile of beads and such out for making dangles last week, I might as well just continue to make more so I have some when I need them. I started off at my desk but decided I'd try to make some while watching some telly with the Tinman.

 This is my tray of assorted beads and such. Most of them are metal beads, a few are wood and shells, then their are the seed beads for the ends of the dangles. I love keeping my eye open for odd looking beads, not just at the bead store but also at garage sales, thrift shops and the Tinman even brings me some vintage necklaces from auctions that I can take apart to use. As a result I have quite an assortment of things to make unique dangle charms with. Whenever I want to make these charms I always take out an different assortment to work with so I'm always getting different combinations.

Here is the pile I did this week. I have a few ideas for some new designs that I think will have these hanging from them. So I better get back to making some jewelry to hang these from.

Oh I just realized it Wednesday so I'm going to tag along with the WOYWW group. Go check out some desks over at the Stamping Ground to see what everyone else is up to this week.

Wendy

Some ATC inspiration.

I gave myself a little play time today since I've been a good worker this week. I took a little time to do some art journaling(sorry nothing interesting to see). It was one of those spray glimmer mist here and there, wait for things to dry, but didn't get anything done. While I was in the studio I noticed my 7 Gypsy ATC tray on the wall and decided it was time for a change. I used Instant tac the first time and it made marks on some of the paper, so this time around I used repositional tape.

 Here is the tray before the change.

And here it is after. 

I was going for a kind of spring feel since it's been raining all day and the snow is melting fast. I love spring, it can never come too early.

Well back to work.

HAPPY TRADING!

Wendy

New Design.

This winter has not been terrible productive for jewelry making for me. I don't know if it's the winter doldrums  or just not having any deadlines that has caused this but I'm trying to get back at it.

This design has been slow in the creating. The idea of riveting together some etched copper pieces has been floating around my head for many months. When I finally got around to doing it I realized that it needed something more and that's when the dangles came into play.

This bracelet that I made last year came to mind, so I made more dangles similar to these. I thought I would just have it on a copper chain but this didn't really do it justice so I made some bead and funky wire connectors and that did the trick.

I'm pleased with how it turned out. What do you think?

Wendy

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