Resin workshop in the studio.

Cara

 This past Saturday I had 3 wonderfully creative students in my studio to learn how to make Resin wire formed jewelry. As always I was inspired by my students designs and creativity. Unfortunately I don't get to take photo's of the completely finished pieces since they need to cure for 3 days after pouring the resin, but I did get the almost finished works in progress photos.

Julia

Julia

Lotte

Lotte

Everyone was happy with their results and I was inspired by their designs.

To make this great teaching day even better, I had the Tin Man and his helper busy weeding my gardens and washing windows. It was like a dream day, teaching in my home studio while someone is doing my hardest chores.

I've had a few request for weekday workshops during the summer. If this is something you're interested in send my an e-mail to let me know what workshop you would like to do and what dates are good for you.

Happy Creating!

Wendy

June ATC meeting

The theme for this months ATC meeting was magazine collage. I think a little different medium for most of us. Some months I can recognize certain peoples cards by their style but this month I had a hard time and definitely had to use my go to list to label them. I'm hoping I got them all right!

Linda

Louise

Lucie

Nancy

Olive

Veronica

Virginia

Wendy

For the first time we also did what we called a Super Swap. Many of us have accumulated extra cards that we've made over the years so we decided to each put in as many cards as we wanted(up to 9) and we could then pick from all of them the amount that we had put in. It turned out great and will probably be something we will do again.

Here are all the cards ready to be swapped. We took turns taking a card each until we had picked the number of cards that we had put in. 

These are the cards that I picked from the pile. When I got home I had to re-organize my ATC binder and start a another one, since the first one was over flowing. 

I still have lots of extra traders too. If you'd like to do a swap leave a comment with your e-mail address and I'll e-mail you to swap snail mail address for the trade. 

Happy Creating!

Wendy

Lachute art journaling field trip.

I have an art journaling group that meets once a month. We usually play around with some techniques and get inspiration from each other. Well this month we decided to take a field trip. We heading off very early one morning to Lachute Market in Quebec. It's a large antique market, flea market and farmers market all in one place. We had a great time and found some fun treasure. Here are my finds for the day.

I had to buy some paper ephemera since it was for our journaling meeting we were here. The mushroom poster on the right under the book was a bonus find in one of the books. The stack of envelopes have some really great stamps on that I just couldn't resist. I've already started to use them as you can see in my journal page further down.

I think these dominoes are my favourite find of the day. It may be hard to tell from this photo but they are very tiny. The tin is 2 inches by 3 inches. The tin made me laugh so I thought I should bring it home. The label says Dr. Charles Worm Chocolates "milk chocolate creams". Apparently it's "The most sure, safe and pleasant remedy for expelling worms from children and adults. Dr. Charles' Worm Chocolates expel Worms and will be of great help in all other ailments for Children such as Fever, Biliousness, lack of appetite, stomachache, restlessness at night, peevishness, sallow complexion, etc." Wow can you believe it, a cure for peevishness!

I've been looking for some crystal salt and pepper shakers for keeping my glitter in. I think these will be a good start for that.

And of course how could I resist a few more suitcases. The larger one in the back opens oddly to the sides so I thought it might be useful for displaying jewelry. It needs a little TLC inside though first.

I found a few watches for the Tin Man to take apart so I can use the gears and a little Danish plate with the Rundetaarn (Round Tower) on it. Many years ago the Tin Man and I went up in this tower. It's most interesting feature is that it has a spiraling ramp to get up to the top. It was built this way so they could transport things with a horse and carriage to the library attached to it and heavy equipment to the top for the observatory which it was originally built for.

Before going to Lachute I challenge everyone to bring their art journals and some supplies to work on a page while we were there but it turned out much colder than we expected and there was just so much to see so we never had a chance to do it. We did decide that we would do a page before the next meeting though. This is mine. I used papers from the books and envelopes that I picked up at the market and the Cropping Chic was given to me by one of my fellow travelers. I'm pretty pleased with myself that I got my page done within a few days of returning from our trip. 

Have you ever tried to art journal on a trip? How did it go? Do you have any tips you can share with me for doing it? Definitely something I will try more often.

Happy Creating!

Wendy

Show preparations.

Urban Craft

I'm so excited to be part of this great show on June 9th. I went to check it out and do some shopping at their last show in March and the variety and creativity of vendors was awesome. So come on out to see me. I'm busy getting ready for it.

I've been busy with my resin and even have a few new designs.

I finished up these new designs the other day. How do you like the asymmetrical look? I always get a little chuckle when people tell me they aren't comfortable with things that are a little off. I have to admit I do feel that it takes a little more effort to do something asymmetrically. Sometimes I layer things a leave them for a while before I decide if they're okay or not.

And here are some I hope to get finished today. The two on the top are going to be bracelets, I just haven't decided if they are going to turn into leather cuffs or chain and bead bracelets. The lower gear one is going to be a necklace. I will probably just add some dangles and hang it on a chain but I can never be sure until it happens.

So let me know what you think. Are you an asymmetrical or symmetrical person? Do you like cuff or bead and chain bracelets? I love getting your comments.

Happy Creating!

Wendy

May ATC challenge

At this months ATC meeting we gave ourselves a bit of a challenge. So we didn't really have a theme. What we did is each person brought a sandwich bag of goodies to swap with someone at the meeting and then make a card on the spot. Then we did our usual random swap of a card at the end of the meeting. I think it was a great success with many of us making a few cards from the packages we received.    
Here are the amazing cards that were made and then traded at the meeting.

Linda

Loiuse

Lucie

Marie

Olive

Veronica

Virginia

Wendy

It's so interesting to see what someone else creates with your stuff. And it's amazing to see how many cards can be made out of one little bag of goodies. I think I found it easier to make cards being limited to just what was in this bag than having my whole studio of stuff to chose from. Here are a few more cards I made while at the meeting from the same bag. 

Have you ever challenged yourself by limiting what products you can use on a project? If you have tell me about it and/or show me with a photo or link.

Happy Creating.

Wendy

Spring has sprung!

Yes, after what seemed like an excessively long winter Spring is finally here and with it the wonderful flowers. I'm not sure why but spring flowers are my favourite. I think I take pictures of the same ones every year but I can't help it I just want them to last forever! So if they look like last years, really they're not, these flowers are blooming right now!

A few late Tulips.

Dwarf Phlox.

A  dark purple Tulip

White Violets 

Lilacs.

I hope you enjoyed my spring flowers. I couldn't possibly chose a favourite among them. Do you have a favourite spring flower?

Happy Creating!

Wendy

Ottawa Bead Society Challenge

Although I'm not a beader last year I decided to join the Ottawa Bead Society. It's great place to get inspired by other jewelry makers. They've had some great demos and I always enjoy the show and tell of peoples jewelry creations. One of the first meetings I went to last year was the reveal of their first bead challenge. It was so interesting to see the outcome that I was glad to hear they were doing it again this year and of course signed up to be part of it. The challenge involves groups of 3 people over a 3 month period. How it works is, the first person creates something with beads and passes it along to the second person at the next meeting and they add to the creation and then passes it along to the third person to finish it and bring to the next meeting for the big reveal. Well I was the third person in my group and this is what I received to work on.

I was loving the colours as soon as I saw it because I knew copper would look great with it. My challenge was the strings and loose ends that came with it. Not being much of a beader I was unsure of what to do with them but after consulting with a local beading store I learned a few new tricks and was able to finish it off just the way I wanted. 

I made an etched copper disc to be a backdrop for the beaded circle and finished off the ends with some interesting caps and beads and my usual adjustable copper hook. I think I was so lucky to get this challenge. There were 10 groups in all and the results were spectacular but this was the one that was most my colours which made the design part of the challenge fairly easy for me. 
I didn't manage to get a photo of all the other ones but I'll let you know when they get them up on their web site.
For my first jewelry challenge I think I can say it was a success. I really enjoyed doing it!

Happy Creating!
 Wendy