Berries! Art Elements Berries Reveal

Hi everyone! This month I hosted the Art Elements challenge and I chose the topic "Berries". The launch post is here...

Anyhooo, I planned to make a whole series of berry beads, but alas, Fate intervened. I had an accident at home (fell!) that resulted in a broken wrist. I had surgery about 3 weeks ago, and have been recovering. I was determined to make at least some tiny effort, so despite the pain in my left hand, I managed to make THREE WHOLE BEADS haha. Welp, here they are in all their glory.

Please hop to see what others made - I can't wait to see for myself! Enjoy!

Here's the Hop List:

Art Elements Team

• Lesley
• Karen   <-- You are here
• Cathy
• Laney
• Jen

Guest Contributors

• Sarah Raines
• Karin Grosset Grange
• Divya
• Bay Moon Design
• Tammy Adams

Holiday Creations - An Art Elements Theme Challenge

My Holiday Creations...

December was a flurry of activity to finish up beads I started way back in October. I had formed these Pine trees and snowflakes, and then got very busy with my "day" job. I'm a design director for an international consultancy. My current project is directing design of a suite of desktop and mobile applications for the Government of Ontario. Lots of travel to Canada!

Anyway, this is is what I started out with...

I made several more beads of various sizes, shapes, a few critters, and elements of woods and foliage... then they sat, waiting until I had time to load them into a bisque fire, glaze over a period of two weeks (when not flying back and forth to work in Toronto), and then glaze fire. Woohoo!

And finally, Voilà! Beads glazed! Here's a sampling. All listed, sold and shipped. I hope my customers will find joy using them in their own jewelry or other creations. ❤ ❤ ❤

Holiday Creation Blog Hop

To see what other artists were up to with their holiday crafting, check out the links below and feel free to leave a comment on each one. Enjoy!

AE team: 

Lindsay

Jenny

Sue

Claire

Niky

Cathy

Guests: 

Sarajo

Kathy

Mary

Hope

Tammy

Evie and Beth

Divya

Merja

Sarah

All in all, 2019 was a pretty good productive year. I got lots made, sold and delivered. I'm a happy camper. :-)

I hope you are enjoying your Holidays. Have a Happy New Year!

Ocean Talisman: An Art Elements Challenge

My Art Elements teammate and friend Lesley Watt made these amazing ocean-inspired ceramic components for our monthly Component of the Month challenge, and I was immediately drawn to make something with one.

The rough-and-tumble (like shells in the surf) nature of the piece led me to go for an appropriately bohemian and rustic treatment.

So I selected a bit of handmade copper chain that I made some years ago - actually my first attempt at forging and soldering chain - I created all the links using a good deal of solder which I left exposed, created the oval jump rings and linked it all up, then patinated the entire thing. I didn't have quite enough for a full 24" necklace, so I used a bit of copper chain I bought and patinated myself a few years ago, and placed this at the back with one of my links at the end for the hook closure (also made by me). I can adjust the length by hooking into a different link, as desired.

For the focal part of the piece, I used jasper rounds and one of my ceramic beads, along with some seed beads strung together on waxed linen, with a couple of my hand-forged links doubled up at the top, to fasten onto the chain.

The entire thing came together rather quickly, no doubt due to the inspiration of the focal.

I hope you enjoyed my little creation.  Be sure to check out the designs of other participants...

Guests

Linda Newnham

Sarajo Wentling

Jess Green

Art Elements team

Laney Mead

Diana Ptaszynski

Susan Kennedy

Cathy Mendola

Jen Cameron

Caroline Dewison

Claire Fabian

NIky Sayers

Jenny Davies-Reazor

Lindsay Starr

Lesley Watt

SaveSave

Beads in the Works...

Slowly getting back into beadmaking again..

Waterfall: An Art Elements Challenge

In the Works...

After a particularly brutal winter, during which I have not been in the best health, I'm finally getting some work done. Here's a few snapshots of work in progress (after the rather bleak looking photo shot out my back door this past December), including a tiny little sneak peak.

Creating a tulip stamp based on my sketches.

A few more carved tulip and quilt block stamps. I ended up not using some of these.

Bear totems.

Barn owl.

Spiral fossil discs.

Beads in the theme of "Way Out West" (coming soon).

Hare totem.

A small sneak peak at one of my arrow connectors.

The back of the arrow connector.

Tiny sneak peak of my "Way Out West" update coming soon.

Glazing in progress...

Bears and Hares! And other stuff in progress...

Bead beads beads!

Glazing to be finished.

Beads waiting for their little glaze coast lol.

Leaning into Fall...

October is here and I find myself turning to more and more fall-ish themes. I will be having a small shop update next week... here are a few sneak peaks of that, plus a few other things I've been working on (not all will be in the update)...