Creative Project #28 ~ last day of the creative challenge.

I am kinda sad that this creative challenge is over.  It has kept me so inspired throughout this month!  Although like I told you in a previous post I joined a new group called "Creative Everyday".  I wont be posting every single day about what I have made, instead weekly, but I still will be creating everyday!

Some days were a crunch to get something creative done, but it was well worth the effort to make the time to do it.

So today I made some more beads. I am hooked on making headpins.  Here are a few of the batch I made.  You will have to wait and see the rest when they are in a piece of jewelry.  I have lots of ideas for these little gems.

I got hooked on making these pins when Cassie Donlen, of the Glass Beadle, had a giveaway on her Facebook page for some headpins that she made.

I WON THE GIVEAWAY!!! WOOHOO!!!

Cassie is an amazing glass bead maker, and has a great video out if anyone is interested.

Cassie then asked on her Facebook page how others made their glass headpins.  She made hers on the end of the mandrel then attached the wire with epoxy.  I wrote in and told her I made mine on high temp wire, but then I wanted to try her method since the wire can be tricky if it isnt completely straight.

The last couple of days I have been making them on the mandrel and kind of like that way.

Here are the awesome headpins that Cassie made, and I won....

I got to pick out the four I preferred.

I cant wait to use them with one of her toggles I bought last year.

Have a great week!

Creative Project #27 ~ a beady kind of day

Today was a day of catching up on some rest as well as melting some glass.  I go into another zone when I make glass beads.  It is like my own little zen.

Here are a few of the batch I made today....

I also designed a new necklace to go with this ceramic pendant that I got out of the kiln on Friday.....

and have started to make some of the components.

The day ended with several rewarding hours of agility training with our agility club and my wonderful potcake, Trixi.

It has been a fun and busy weekend.....I love it!

Creative Project #26 ~ a busy, busy day!

All week you have been hearing me talk about "Da Market" that took place today.

It was an overwhelming success all around.

I sold my handmade goods, we sold tshirts and bags for our humane society, and Amy and I practically sold out of vegan food!

We were left with one vegan cheesecake and one slice of vegan mac and *cheese*.

Here are Amy and I in our tent.

Da Market is going to take place again the last Saturday of March and I think I will be signing up again for it!

Then after lunch our dog agility group trained for 3 hours with a trainer/judge, Daniel McDonald, from Florida.

Trixi is my current agility dog and she amazes me every lesson. She was a rescue that I planned to re-home.  She turned up outside the vets office and whenever a human would approach her she would let out a blood curdling scream.  Now she runs an agility course with confidence and it makes my heart smile :)

After agility I came home, ate dinner and left again to attend Junkanoo, which is a street festival/parade that is native to the Bahamas.

The costumes and the music amaze me every year.

I am exhausted, but is has been a fantastic day.  I should sleep well tonight!

Good night!

Creative Project #25 ~ da market!

As I told you yesterday, today was a day of tying up lose ends.  Gathering show supplies, packaging items, and doing all those last minute things.  I feel like I am prepared and that scares me so far in advance.....I NEVER feel this way the night before any type of show.

My friend, Amy, and I will have some vegan yummies for sale tomorrow in our tent along with our humane society shirts and bags, and I will have a small selection of my handmade things.

After I got the kiln running this morning, I started making labels for my vegan food.

"H" for Hummus!

Tags for *cheese*cakes...vegan of course :)

Yummies labeled and tied.  

Amy will have *N*ice Cream ~ homemade vegan ice cream which is delicious.

I also managed to get some more bags sewn.  These bags are really trying my patience.  The slippery material has a mind of its own under the presser foot!

I really like the shape and size of the dog food bags!  I'd wear the short, wide one on the left as a purse.....but that is artsy, fartsy me :)
Now if that kiln would hurry up and cool down I would really be ready!

Hope all of you close by will be at Da Market in the morning....9am til 1pm.

Have a great weekend!

Creative Project #24 ~ paint, paint, paint!

I almost missed my post today!!!  WOW!  Couldn't let that happen since I am on such a roll!

Thursdays are usually such a busy day for me anyway, and today was even crazier with Saturday's market coming up.

Thursdays are my day to grocery shop, have lunch with friends, run errands in town, do banking, dog agility class........

On top of all of that I baked vegan cheesecakes to sell on Saturday, made tons of hummus, and painted ceramic beads.

These babies need to go in the kiln first thing in the morning, right after my run!

Here are some of them drying....

Tomorrow I will need to get all my show goodies together and in one place, like floats, bags, display stands......just so Saturday morning there are no early morning meltdowns.

Good Night!

Creative Project #23 ~ sewing bags while waiting

Happy Hump day all!

A really quick post today to show you a glimpse of my creative journey today.  I mentioned yesterday that Saturday I have a function to attend to raise money for Friends of Abaco Animals.  Those clay pieces I showed you yesterday I put in the kiln for their first firing.

The firing took about five hours and now I sit and wait for it to cool down.  Last time I checked the temperature was at 960!  I probably wont be able to open the kiln until tomorrow.

So in the meantime I went outside and washed out cat and dog food bags......

Hung them to dry......

Now you are really thinking I have lost my mind!!!

But......I am making bags to sell at the Humane Society stall on Saturday!

Great shopping bags that are waterproof!

Trixi and Merlin wanted to pose with the bag! hahaha!

If you are in Abaco, please come by Da Market on Saturday, from 9am - 1pm, in the parking lot of the Bahamas National Trust office.

Creative Project #22 ~ silk and clay

This week is turning out to be busy, busy, busy!  On Saturday I am participating in something called "Da Market".  It is put on by the Bahamas National Trust.

There will be farmers there with fresh produce, local food, preserves, arts and crafts.

I will have a tent there for "Friends of Abaco Animals", and under that tent a small selection of a few of my things.

If you are in Abaco, be sure to come out.  I may have a few surprises :)

So this week I have been preparing for Saturday, and found some time today to finish up that scarf I started on Sunday.

Let me tell you....silk is so much fun to sew!!! It keeps running away from you!

In the end I won the battle and got the scarf hemmed!

I am looking forward to making some more of these.

I also had my hands in clay on and off today.  I need a few embellishments for this weekend.

That blue contraption is my slab roller.  I also leave the pieces there to dry into greenware.  The shelf above it my husband hung for me yesterday so I can easily grab tools and glazes.

This week is flying by.....hope it is a good one for all of you :)

Creative Project #21 ~ my inspiration for RAW

A few posts back I told you about a group I had joined on Flickr, called RAW (Ring A Week).  The challenge in this group is to make a new ring every week. Today the group is having a blog carnival.  At the bottom of this post you can see a list of participants and click on their blogs to see what inspired them to join this group.  You won't be disappointed by the wonderful work you find!

I have been making jewelry for years, but until a year ago would just give it away as gifts.  I started metal smithing a little over a year ago, and it has been an interesting journey.

At first I was pretty intimidated to post any of my work into this group since the ring pictures in the group are over the top!  Then I thought this would push me to try new things especially since rings are probably my least favorite thing to make.

So I joined RAW hoping it would inspire me to try new techniques and get over my fear of making rings.

I make my rings out of fine silver, fused glass, sea glass, antique pottery shards, lamp worked beads.  Something I am working towards is making rings out of Precious Metal Clay.

For the ring above I made a silver bezel, filled it with tiny pieces of sea glass and shells, then filled it with resin.

Here are a few with my lamp worked pieces and wire wrapping.

All last night I had an idea in my head for a ring which was a combination of metal smithing and a flame worked bead.

I set out this morning to try it out.  I made the silver band but I could not get the part on the top that would hold the bead to work.  So I bezeled a piece of antique pottery to make use of the band.

I like the the square pottery on the round silver.

Sometimes the pottery pieces can be tricky to work with.  It can chip easily and the pieces are sometimes rounded from the plate or bowl they have come from.

Be sure and check out all the jewelry artists that are participating in this blog carnival.

Here is a list of them:

Marcie Abney - www.labellajoya.blogspot.com
Joanne Harrill - www.jojobell.com
Thomasin Durgin - www.metalriot.blogspot.com
Amy Nicole - www.rubymtnbeads.blogspot.com
Janice - www.doxallodesigns.blogspot.com
Aleksandra Micic - www.micicart.blogspot.com
Lana Chu - www.ginkgoglass.wordpress.com
Evelyn Markasky - www.markasky.blogspot.com
Kerry Alice-Twigs and Heather - www.twigsandheather.blogspot.com
Lorena Angulo- blog.lorenaangulo.com/
Kate Jones-- www.katejonesdesign.blogspot.com
Maria Apostolou- www.createjewelry.gr/blog
Sarah Small - www.bysalla.blogspot.com
Rebecca Bogan - www.Adobesol.com/blog
Elaine Luther - www.CreativeTextureTools.com/news
Rebekah Timlin Meddles - www.lunasadesigns.blogspot.com
Laura M (Zoeowyn) - www.zoeowyn.blogspot.com/
Kimberly (bahamadawn) - www.bahamadawn.blogspot.com
Erin Austin - www.metalmusing.blogspot.com
Catherine Witherell - www.happydayart.typepad.com
Michele Grady- www.michelegradydesigns.blogspot.com
Joan Furilla - jfurilla.wordpress.com/
Kathryn Cole- www.kathryncolejewelry.blogspot.com 

Creative Project #20 ~ silk scarfs

Today I dove into something that I have not touched in a while....silk painting!

It started because I am still going through the many boxes of *STUFF* that we dug out of the attic and I found some panels I had painted back in 2002! YIKES!

I have also painted hundred's of silk pillows, so many that I will only do them now on the rare occasion!

So when I found these panels I wanted to get out the silk painting supplies, and I wanted to paint a scarf.  I have been wearing a lot of different scarves this winter and have been thinking of lighter scarves I could wear for the spring.  Silk is perfect!

One problem was that most of my stretcher frames had gone to storage since renovations are starting upstairs tomorrow.....eeekkkk!

So I had to do what I could with what I had!

I am going to have to paint this scarf in sections on a smaller stretcher frame.

Right now this part is drying.

Of course, I was itching to *finish* something, so I took one of my lizard panels and cut the backing off of it.  It was a little too short for a regular scarf but could be used as a cowl.  I added a Jangles button to hold it closed, after I hemmed it, and taaaddaaaa!!

I think this will be the perfect accessory for spring!

See you tomorrow :)

Creative Project #19 ~ flea market shopping creativity

I am exhausted!!!!!!

I spent the day at the Man-O-War Flea Market helping out at our Humane Society's booth, so there wasn't much time for creating today, but I got some good finds at the flea market!

Of course I found some new plates for my collection.

Most were a plain mint green, but still pretty.

You can see (most) of my existing collection in the background.

This floral one with the bee couldn't be left homeless.

A floral one with colors from the 70's.

I also got a bunch of different linens.  I'll show you my favorites.

This funky flamingo one will be perfect out by the pool!  Time for another pool party!

Some cutwork, embroidered napkins.

Some fun pillow cases that I think I may turn into napkins that will go perfectly with the flamingo table cloth.  I need to measure and see how many I will be able to get out of them.

And this set of 8 napkins which will be great for everyday use, since I am trying to cut down on my use of paper goods.

I did manage to squeeze in a teeny tiny bit of creative time.  One of my blogging friends, Bella Bead Jewelry, has a challenge on her blog for Art Journaling.  I have also been watching lots of youtube videos on this lately.
So this afternoon I got out the watercolors to do a small piece to describe my day.
Here is what I created.....

Watercolors really intimidate me.  I think I am terrible at them, and that bothers me.  So I am looking forward to incorporating them into my art journaling.
Hope you have all had a happy Saturday like me :)

Creative Project #18 ~ from the kitchen to the sewing room

Today has been a crazy-busy day.  I started out baking some banana bread for a Humane Society Fundraiser.

While that baked I worked on some more asterisk blocks.  An idea for a set of placemats popped into my head with the asterisk flowers all over them, i made some smaller blocks, but i need to figure out some other design elements of the placemats so that is on the design board for now.  

Problem was I was antsy to finish making *SOMETHING* with one of these blocks that I am so addicted to making.  This little bag was born......

It is the perfect fit for my iphone and ipod.

The back is made up of scrappy greens.

These will be a new item at my next show and will be perfect embellished with my ceramic or glass buttons.

While I was finishing up this little bag I had a loaf of whole wheat bread in the oven.

My oven has been on over time today, because as I type this post I have these (vegan) stuffed cabbage rolls in the oven!

It has been a hectic week and tomorrow will be a hectic day.  I head over to Man-O-War to help with out my Humane Society's table at the flea market.  I hope to find some new plates to add to my collection!
Have a great weekend!

Creative Project #17 ~ when supplies are low

I have let myself get dangerously low on my fine silver wire supply, and the urge to create jewelry hit me today so I had to turn to copper.  One of my favorite sayings (I am not sure who's quote) is "Do what you can with what you have".

So that is what I set out to do with my creative challenge today.

I learned how to make the coiled circles from an issue of Step by Step Wire Jewelry.  In the magazine they were on a silver necklace as spacers, but the copper worked just as well.

I strung the pendant on two satin ribbons for an elegant necklace.

Yesterday I told you about my asterisk blocks I was working on.  I worked on them some more today.  Here are the pressed and trimmed blocks.

I hope everyone is having a fantastic week!