Sun Prints, Resin and Fabric/Paper

Here are a few shots of some jewelry that i created in time for this weeks First Friday Opening at Artful Dimensions Gallery.  I have been thinking about this piece for a long time.  I love the shape of hearts, the symbol, what it represents and the universality of that symbol.  I created these hearts with fabric/paper collage and then rimmed each heart with a golden edge, backed each with my own sun printed red fabric and encased each one in Ice Resin.  I added some of my fabric/paper rolled beads that were also dipped in Ice Resin and combined them with glass beads and bits of vintage copper chains.

The second piece that is ready for display is called Blue Bee.  This wonderful brass bee is mounted in a square black bezel that contains a piece of my gold/green/blue fabric paper all held in place by Ice Resin  .  Hanging from the Bee's antenna are a collection of tiny gold chains, a tiny vintage glass prism and some glue and green glass beads.

I am having some wonderful success with experiments using my sun printed linen textiles in combination with the Ice Resin.  They are not quite ready for prime time, but I will share them with you very soon!

A Benefit Auction

This week I ahve been busily creating some pieces for an Art Auction to benefit a wonderful local artist who is in the middle of a massive battle against a very aggressive brain cancer. Tracey is in her mid forties and took herself to the Emergency Room this past early summer with what was thought to be a bad migraine. Instead it was determined that she had three tumors growing in her brain. She was taken to surgery and the tumors were removed- thank goodness they were able to get to them and disks saturated with chemotherapeutic drugs were placed at the tumor sites. Then the real battle began, 6 weeks of daily radiation treatments and daily doses of Chemo.

Tracey is incredibly fit and active and a very gifted artist and a wonderful person. She is married to a Marine and lives in Fredericksburg. Women Tracey's age are not supposed to be afflicted by this sort of Brain Cancer. Now Tracey is continuing her fight down at Duke University Medical School where she has been enrolled in the Brain Cancer Program for this specific type of Cancer. Tracey is very connected to the arts Community if Fredericksburg and several of her closest friends are arranging an Arts Auction to help the Clarks deal with the mounting costs associated with traveling back and forth to Duke for further tests and treatments. As Mr Clarke works for the US Marines, they are blessed with good health coverage.

I have met Tracey three times, but she made a large impact on my life as an artist and as a very open and caring woman. She was a featured artist at FCCA in the Members Gallery last June. As I am the Coordinator of events in the Members Gallery, it was my pleasure to meet with her during the hanging of her exhibit and to introduce her to my daughter as her work depicting animals is something that Becca is fascinated by. Tracey is completely self taught. She spent several moments talking with Becca and explaining how very important it is to stick with something and to constantly practive to achieve ones goals. to learn more about Tracey and to see her incredible art you can go to here blog, here.

This is a small example of the amazing work that Tracey does. this is one of the birds that was on for sale at Tracey's June Show at FCCA. She also had a Black Capped Chickadee that I was in love with but someone else beat me to it!

Now we are preparing for the Art Auction the will take place on Saturday November 5th from 4-6pm at Tracey's church New City Fellowship. I hope that I will see many of my local friends at the auction, artists or not!!

The hand felted and beaded Christmas Ornaments at the top of this post will also be included in the Auction but my major effort has been concentrated in creating this special piece. To create this collaged necklace, I have used a vintage name plate fitted with some of my fabric paper domed with resin, as a focal .

I have combined fresh water pearls, hand made Tyvek beads, tiny brass bird figures, a Brazilian opal, some lavender crystals, some hand dyed silk ribbons and a tiny charm printed with the word Hope. The chains that I use were gathered from vintage jewelry and a very old watch chain.

After finishing this piece I realized that it speaks strongly piece of the quote by Emily Dickinson about hope,.

1. “Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without words, and never stops at all"

I have just discovered that Tracey also maintains a blog about animals titled "Not One Sparrow". I have made this piece in honor of Tracey and all that she is going through and her immense compassion for all of God's creatures. I hope that someone will love it as much and be generous with their contributions to Tracey's fight for her life.

Tracey and her husband Craig ,and least importantly I, would ask that you all include Tracey in your thoughts and prayers for a strong and decisive victory against this insidious cancer.

Birdies, Berries and Classes!

Before we had all of our rain last week, I noticed a piece of thin plastic waving about in the climbing rose bush. I figured the wind had deposited it there but when I went to pull it down, I found that it had been put there by Mr or Mrs Cardinal!! IT was firmly woven into the structure of the nest that was hidden in the thorny canes of the bush. So smart!!! I did cut out the bit that was flapping in the wind and free from the nest. If it had not been for the plastic tail, I would have never noticed the nest. Now Mrs is getting pretty used to me stopping by for a chat. If you click on the photo and enlarge it you can really see her sitting in on her nest. that orange beak really glows. I love all of the wildlife that makes our yard their home. another benefit of organic gardening. Last week as I planted the tomatoes, I was joined by a large Box Turtle- I shared a few worms with him just to let him know he was welcome any time:).

this is my first year to harvest the Rhubarb and I am thrilled with how my first batch of Strawberry Rhubarb Jam came out.

Yesterday I made a batch of bread and it seems that I have to make another batch tomorrow. Today Matthew ate 3/4 of a loaf of bread as toast, slathered with fresh jam. Strawberry Rhubarb jam is his favorite! I hope that I have enough for another batch!!!! He has been all grins for most of the day!!! YUM!!

Last Saturday I taught my second session of my Collage Jewelry Class. After my first go at teaching this class, I shook things up a bit and the class went much more smoothly! I am starting to have return students and new students who have come to class because they have heard about the classes form their friends! Validation is always so very rewarding!!! Julia did a fabulous job on the necklace that you see above and created a second one as well. Several folks were having trouble with breaking wire till we discovered that they were using pliers with teeth in them, i.e not jewelry grade pliers. Once we changed out the pliers, things went so much more smoothly!!!!

This is Julia's second piece.

this piece was made by a wonderful gal who had a huge collection of her Mom's costume jewelry. We repaired a few pieces and then put a group of them together in this lovely necklace. She was thrilled and so was I !! I love it when students leave classes happy and satisfied!!

Names are flying from my brain at the moment, I hate that, but I love this simple piece with the glorious red sari ribbon! The student wrapped the found stone without any help from me and added a few accent beads. This young gal is a natural!!! I can see a lot more jewelry in her creative future!!

I realized that I never posted the pieces made during my most recent Beaded Cuff class, so here they are.

Meg had some time constraints so she was not able to finish her bead work but she followed our finishing process and will complete her cuff on her own. What she has done was so very pretty and full of personal symbols. I love it when students make their pieces their own!!!

Kathi chose her palette of colors from the sea and did a fabulous job with her hand work!!

Gloria made this stunning Black and Gold creation and was almost done with a second piece!!

Jan used shells and turquoise to conjure thoughts of the ocean for her design. by the time class was over we had most of the beaded cuffs complete and all were excited to be starting on new pieces. They all purchased lots of supplies to keep themselves well stocked!!


I want to leave you with a few shots of my spectacular pink iris from before our week of rain and storms! the delicate blossoms really do not hold up well to rain and they are pretty much done for another year. While they were untouched they were simply stunning and soooo very fragrant!! The roses were not overly happy with the drenching either but at least Belinda's Dream will bloom hard for me all summer. Especially after I give her a banana skin coffee grounds egg shell cocktail to give herr a shot of energy!!!

The Siberian iris are such a stunning sapphire blue, almost purple color and the yellow iris hung in there long enough to give some wonderful contrasting color play in the garden bed. The rose in the background is just coming into her own and is super fragrant.

I hope that where ever you are the flowers are blooming or the leaves are turning to give you the wonderful colors of nature's gifts!!

My 500th POST !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I loaded these photos last night intending to write a post about a Collage Jewelry Class that I taught recently at Artistic Artifacts, Then I noticed the post counter!!! My 500th Post!! Can't quite believe it, but here it is!! I will be having a Blog Giveaway and I will be announcing it soon so watch for it!!! So back to the Collage Jewelry Class at Artistic Artifacts!! This was a first run for this class for me and as always happens ont he first time taught , I learned so many things. The first being to add time for everyone to look at each other's stash of treasures!!! Oh man did we have fun , and each treasure ahd a wonderful story to go along with it. As usual I had a fabulous bunch of gals who were anxious to dive in and learn about wire wrapping and link making.

In the class orphan earrings became charms, a pair of earrings became a wonderful pair of links with holes for more danglies, a wonderful piece of found coral became a focal piece and a beautiful twig became a large link and perch for a sterling lizard charm ! We had such fun!

We faced the challenges of figuring out the best way for each to hold their own set of pliers and how to hold things to get a nice wire wrap around items that have no holes.

It is so satisfying to put a jumble of bits and pieces of treasures and chain together to create a unique collection of personal jewelry. Each piece was so very different and spoke of the character of it's creator.

I will be teaching the class again on May 14th ( a Saturday) there are still one or two spaces left so if you are in the neighborhood come join us to create your own treasure necklace!!!