New Jewelry and Felting Backgrounds with the Kids!

I ahd a very successfual holiday season at Liberty Town this year and had to rush about after vanquishing the dreaded horrific virus , to create more stock for sales. I sold all of the resin earrings that I had delivered right before Christmas so I dove right back into the resin pond as my peices seemed to be so popular- Go with the sure thing right? these pictures are a bit blurrey as the resin is hard to photograph and a flash absolutely does not work!!
The earrings above are made with sterling wire and have images from a vintage dictionary. I embellished them with czech glass beads . It was hard to leave these to be sold- I need to make some for myself!!
This pair is made with a piece of my fabric paper with sheet music and colored tissue as the backing

I think that a real music lover might be drawn to this pair, I know that I would be!

I made these tiny collages with tiny images for hummingbirds and added the snippet of music and a bit of color to each. the beads hang down behind the images on a silver chain. Theya re both different but similar enough to work as a very unique pair. I am finding that assymetrical pairs are becoming quite popular. at least with the buyers at Liberty Town!

Last Wednesday I began my Felted Wallhanging adventures with the fifth grade class at Fredericksburg Academy.
We are going to be working together for the next several weeks to create a fabulous Rain Forest Wallhanging to be raffled off at the Annual Fredericksburg Academy Auction Fundraiser.

It was delightful to work with a nice small group of 14 versus the mob of 45 that I had led back in Novemeber. We split into groups and laid down roving in allsorts of wonderful greens , browns and bits of blue. The kids were a bit dissappointed that we ran out of time. i had to take the pieces home and do the final shrik down and throwing myself.

We plan to rememdy this when we get together again this Wednesday!!!

After steaming, I pinned the panels out on some foam boards to dry. The colors are wonderful!!
Tonight I will stitch all of these panels together to create a background canvas that we will work on tomorrow. We will be making more panels of greens , ropes in greens and browns for vines, colorful panels for flowers and birds and green ropes for snakes. Mrs. Reynolds is determined to create a Howler Monkey for a focal point
. Last week I sent the kids off with a homework assignment. They are to come up with some simple sketches of things that they think should be included in our project. It will be interesting to see what thye come into class with tomorrow.
This is a project that could consume as much time ,energy, wool and ideas as we could throw at it, but we have to keep it under control as the Auction is in early March and we do not have unlimited time and supplies. the kidsa re really enjoying the project and the fact that they get so much say into what we are creating!!