Today we will be working with glass and fabric!

So the other day I was asked by a dear friend to make a few pieces of jewelry that she will gift this Christmas. One of the items at first sounded quite challenging and I almost declined the request but after discussing her vision and mulling it over for a few days I have decided to take up the challenge.

HER REQUEST: green glass heart, about ¾” to 1” wide with a little yellow buttercup

My 1^st response: Glass isn’t like paper so I can’t just cut it into the shape of a heart. I would need a saw to make the cuts and I DON’T HAVE A SAW. And what is a buttercup?

Her response: I’m sure you’ll figure it out and the flower doesn’t have to be made out of glass. I trust your artistic vision.

HA!!! Great…

So with that here are the questions I went away with:

#1: what the heck does a Buttercup look like

#2: how to cut a heart out of glass

Well after a quick search on the Google I now know what a buttercup is. Easy enough. Now how to replicate that: I know Fabric…

Here is what I found and how I replicated it:

Real Buttercup

Fabric Buttercup

Now on to the heart… Well this part may end up being a bit trickier but I have some ideas. I will share more on that topic after I have worked on it a bit. For now here is what I am trying.

Ta-ta,

M.

I'm on ETSY!!!

Oh my gosh, FINALLY!! Last night I officially posted items for sale to ETSY! And after all of my dragging of feet, fretting, and excuse making I have to say it was rather simple. A bit on the time consuming side, but honestly I think that was only because I was working from the laptop. I am not very proficient on that keyboard so typing all the descriptions took a bit longer than expected. Other than that, Etsy makes it so incredibly simple to list. I for one am completely impressed.

Here are the sweet little trinkets I listed.

Turquoise Chips with Red Coral Accent Bead

Red Coral with Turquoise Skull and White Glass Flower

Dia de los Muertos Inspired Necklace

Turquoise Tubes with Red Skull and White Glass Flower

Round Turquoise with Pewter Flower

Red Coral with Bone White Skull and Clear Glass Flower

Red Coral Tubes with Turquoise Skull and White Glass Flower

Turquoise Tubes with White Skull and Red Glass Flower

If you would like you can check all of them out and even buy something by following this link

 http://www.etsy.com/shop/SirensCalling

Ta-ta,

M.

FEAR OF FAILURE BE DAMNED!!!

After a little hiatus from my creative side, I would like to welcome myself back to my blog. Hello little blog. Did you miss me? I missed you. I have so much to tell you, some things super fun and other things are more like self realizations. So let’s start with the fun stuff.

Hubby and I spent a week in a little beach house on Oahu. We swam with turtles, watched the sunrise, hiked, and simply relaxed. It was delightful and I came back refreshed and recharged.

While there I decided that I needed a ukulele. Told hubby that by the end of the year I want to be able to play at least three cords. So far I have figured out how to strum (baby steps). My rhythm is a bit off but it’s definitely better than the first day I played with it.

I also found this amazing hand carved octopus.

Now that I am back from vacation and fully caught up at the office I feeling my creative juices flowing. Over the weekend I made seven felt dahlia for a co-worker (she is giving them as Christmas gifts). She had originally ordered five of them and after I made them I wasn’t 100% happy with the color combination on two, so I made two more. I figured I would let her choose the ones she liked the best. Well, I brought them to work for her today and she ended up buying ALL of themJ. AWESOME!!!

OK, so now to the self realization part. I have realized (maybe better to say re-realized) that I have a huge fear of failure, and more often than not, that fear keeps me from excelling and reaching my goals. With that said, the second thing I will do tonight after I get home (first thing is to kiss my wonderful hubby) is post a few items on Etsy. Honestly I have no good reason why I haven’t posted them already. I mean seriously the items were completed last month and I wrote all of the descriptions already. The only thing I have to say for this is what I have already stated; FEAR OF FAILURE. Oh well, they say the first step is admitting you have a problem right?!

Ta-ta for now.

M.

Felting, knotting and sugar skulls, oh my…

With Halloween just around the corner I have been inspired by the art of Dia De Los Muertos. Here are some of the fruits of my labors.

I LOVE these little sugar skulls soooo much!!! Now if I could only figure out how to make them in a shorter amount of time.

The black one is the first one I made. I must have spent at least eight hours poking away on every little detail. The whole thing was done with a single needle, and felted very tightly. When I started the white one I was trying to make it in less than two hours. I figured the best way to do this was to not pack the felt so much. While this did speed up the process, I am a tad bit over the two hour mark and still need to add a few flowers to her. C’est la vie, I still love them…

Now that I am confident with my hand-knotting skills I am making lots of bracelets. Here are a few that will be making their way to Etsy very soon. As you can see, the obsession with dia de los muertos touched these little treasures too.



Red Jasper w/ white skull and clear red czech glass accent bead



Red coral w/ torquoise skull and white czech glass flower accent bead



Red coral w/ white skull and clear czech glass flower accent bead

Moonstone w/ pink skull and clear czech glass flower accent bead

Red coral w/ turquoise skull and white czech glass flower accent bead

And finally, here is the adorable little necklace that led to the first official jewelry sale.



15” sterling silver chain w/ red and white skulls

 Bye for now,
M.

How to take lovely pictures…?

For the past week I have been busily working on bracelets, vases, necklaces and trying to keeping sane as I approach my goal; to have items listed on Etsy by this coming Saturday. So far I have nine completed bracelets and four that are close to completion, five vintage bottle hanging vases , and a couple of necklaces, but those are already sold… Yes, I had my first official sale over the weekend!!!! I was so over come with joy that I squealed like a little girl and did a little happy dance. Lucky for the hubby, he had just come into the room so he was able to share my joy and laugh at me all at the same time.

Now that I have these items completed it is time to write descriptions and start taking photos to share with all of you. While I have ideas for how to write the descriptions I am a bit concerned that I will not be able to express in words what someone would see and feel if they purchased my treasures in person. With that said, I understand that a picture is worth a thousand words so I figured I would just take several great photos and they would fill in any details I may have missed . Simple enough, right? Yea, not so much…

This weekend I staged all of the items I had completed and began clicking away with my trusty camera. Sadly out of the many photos I shot I only got a few that I would considered usable, and they were only of the bracelets. I did not get any of the vases that I considered useable.

Here are the bracelets. I really love the way they look on this starfish.

*Blue jasper with silver flower on hand knotted silk cord*

*Moonstone and turquoise accent bead on hand knotted silk cord*

*Red coral with turquoise accent bead on hand knotted silk cord*

*Red jasper with white skull and red glass flower on hand knotted silk cord*

*Turquoise with red coral accent bead on hand knotted silk cord*

*Turquoise with red skull and white glass flower accent bead on hand knotted silk cord*

*Yellow green jasper with silver flower accent bead on hand knotted silk cord*

So here are the hanging vintage bottle vases. I am not at all happy with these photographs. They don't seem to show the detail that you would see if you were actually looking at them..

*Vintage insulator hanging vase/lantern with red glass beads*

*Vintage bottle hanging lantern with red glass beads and crystal accent bead at bottom*

*Vintage green bottle hanging lantern with lavender glass bead*

I had this "great" idea to take them to the park and photograph them hanging from a tree. I love the way they look when hung together, it gives them a very whimsy feel. What I found was that they got "lost" in all of the greenery. Very sad :)

I have to admit that i naively thought taking the photos was going to be the easy part. Boy was I mistaken. I have a whole new respect for art of photography and the level of skill needed to take a lovely picture.

M.

Beading at the beach...

Hubby and I had a great time with the pups at the coast this past weekend. Check out this view as we walked down to the beach Friday night. You cannot tell from this picture but it was VERY windy down on the beach. It didn't take long to realize that the poor pups were getting sandblasted, so we cut our walk short and went back up to the room to watch the sunset.

*The veiw from The Ester Lee*

The weather Saturday was beautiful and hot, something that has been very rare this summer. My boss suggested we stop by Tiki's on 51st, in Lincoln City, OR for their Mojito's. So glad we did, they were FANTASTIC!!! If you find yourself in Lincoln City definitely stop in for one or three... :)

*Bob says, "it's hot i want a Mojito."*

We also found a great little bead shop in Depoe Bay, Roots, where I picked up some turquoise, coral and moonstone beads. I have to admit that it was difficult to restrain myself; they have such a great selection of beads.

*New beads from Roots, Depeo Bay, OR*

*The bracelets I made while relaxing on the Oregon Coast*

Surprisingly, I even managed to get a few bracelets made. These and a few other goodies should be posted on Etsy by the end of the month. So please stay tuned.

M.

A Pirates Life for Me…

So hubby’s birthday was last week and the theme for his party was PIRATES… Now before you go and get all, “OMG, how old is your husband? Why would you have a pirate party for him?” on me, let me tell you that it was great fun. With the help of my trusty friend Wabbit, we turned our back deck into a pirate ship/shanty town, complete with a scary skeleton pirate, cannon, treasure chest and piñata filled with booty and tiny rum bottles. Seriously who wouldn’t love a party like that? Here are some of the pictures taken by the lovely and talented Wabbit.

So in keeping with the pirate theme I am taking my dear sweet man and our two crazy pups to the beach for the weekend. Ok so maybe it is a bit of a stretch to say I am keeping the theme going but I have heard that pirates use to frequent the Oregon coast.

We will be staying at the Ester Lee in Lincoln City, OR. It is a great little place with amazing views of the ocean. I am very excited to not only have a long weekend away with my man but I plan to get up early for some beach combing. Maybe this will be the weekend I find my very own mermaids purse or even better, some buried treasure. Wish me luck!!!

I hope you all have a great weekend.

Side Tracked or Flora & Fauna...

Today I would like to share one of my most recent obsessions: terrariums…

I am soooo in love with this art form I cannot even stand it. I think it all started shortly after my Mom bought a beautiful and huge, antique apothecary jar when she was visiting me a few years ago. See, she had flown up here and like we always do when we get together, we shopped ‘til we dropped and she bought several things that she could not take on the plane because they were too large (this usually happens). In the past I either drive the goodies down to her or she and my dad would drive up and retrieve their booty. But as soon as I saw this apothecary jar I knew that bad boy would never leave my possession, but I played it cool and let her think she was getting it for herself.

*My Mommy’s Apothecary Jar*

This is George, my baboon

Upon returning from that particular shopping trip we unloaded the car, and I carefully carried that beautiful jar up to my living room,  placed it  on the table. So here how the next few moments went:

ME: Mom, this jar may break if you try to take it home on the plane. Maybe you should just leave it here for now and I’ll make sure it stays safe.

MOM: Oh I think I can get it home just fine.

ME: Maybe, but it would sure be a shame if it broke and you and Dad are going to be driving up here in a few months so you could just take it home then.

MOM: You are not going to keep this jar.

ME: *Smile*

Well, long story shortened, it’s been about two years since she bought that jar, my folks have driven up here several times, and I still have it prominently displayed in my living room..

Mom, if I haven’t already said it, Thank you for the beautiful jar!!!

So since then I have discovered air plants. Oh my how I love these little guys. They are so cute and easy to work with. Here are the terrariums I have created so far.

* Floating desert*

 my first creation.

*Medusa at the beach*

*Fairy Forest*

*Carries B-day Gift*

*Fiona the fox*

So last night was water the air plants night. For those of you unfamiliar with how this is done, from what I understand there are two ways to do this. Either you mist them or you soak them. I prefer the soaking method. I was told that they should be soaked for about an hour then placed on a towel to remove the excess water before they are placed back in their terrarium home. Well this is where the “SIDE TRACKED” part of this post come in. I gathered all of my plants placed them in the water bowls and about three hours later remembered they were still soaking. I believe they are all ok, but my question is, “can you drowned a plant that needs to be soaked?”

I have come to accept that my brain gets side tracked sometimes (ok a lot of the time) but there are a lot of advantages to the whole, ever changing, one thing leads to another, just go with it approach to life. Most importantly because of this I have had many adventures because I acted on a whim. On the downside, yea, about that, let’s just say that there are days that I should not be allowed to operate heavy machinery.

Well that’s it for today. Thanks for stopping by, now get out there and enjoy the flora & fauna of your world.

P.S. For you local folks, if you are interested in air plants or terrariums, here are my favorite local shops:

Artemisia Garden Nursery 110 SE 28^th Ave, Portland, OR - 503-232-8224

Pistils Nursery 3811 N Mississippi Ave. Portland, OR - 503-288-4889

Paxton Gate 4204 N Mississippi Ave, Portland, OR - 503-719-4508