Village Artisans Gallery

Village Artisans is a lovely gallery located in the picturesque village of Boiling Springs, Pennsylvania. The owner, PJ Heyman, carries a beautiful and varied selection of paintings, sculpture, photography and hand crafted items. This year PJ won a Niche Award for being one of the top ten craft retailers in the U.S. Congratulations Village Artisans! I am happy to say they are now carrying some of my pendants and earrings too. Check out their web site at http://www.villageartisansgallery.com/

Holiday Color

Sorry for not posting for a while. I've been busy making jewelry to sell, getting Christmas gifts ready to mail and doing all the usual stuff we all do. You are probably too busy to read this anyway, but maybe just sitting at the computer a minute is a break for you as it is for me.
Been thinking about reds and experimenting with silver foil. Here are some of the results.

Tweet Tweet

Here is a photo of a couple more bird houses. I like the bright primary colors and some birds do too. On the "Life" series, from the Discovery Channel, they showed a bower bird gathering bits of "bling" and color to decorate his place to attract a mate. Really, this bird is the Candice Olson of the bird world.

I plan to make the next house in soft colors for the understated tweeters out there.

Ohio Bead Swap

Our guild decided to try a swap with another guild recently. We swapped beads using metallic foils, glitter, or metallic powders with the creative people in the Columbus Ohio guild. Here is a photo of the beads we sent.
Everyone came up with such creative and unique solutions to the challenge. Too cool!
Thanks everyone for participating.

Nobody Here But Us Chickens

OK, I promise I won't mention pirates after today, really, scouts honor. I just wanted to share the adorable chicken I bought at Sandy Camp. What you say, do chickens have to do with pirates? Good question, and not much of a connection really, except that the only photo I have of Tina Goodrich, the wonderful chicken's creator, is, as you guessed it, a pirate at Sandy Camp! See her holding another one of her creations, Jack Sparrow. Both are much cuter in person, but this wasn't a Vogue photo shoot after all. You can see more of Tina's work by clicking on the link to her blog, KT Did Clay, from the list of blogs on the right. Thanks Tina for all your fun creations. They always make me smile. 

This little rooster is now the guardian of my kitchen cupboard. Anyone taking a dish, sees this colorful feathered sentry and hopefully has a little chuckle.

Hey, this guy means business!

Scull & Crossbones

Have you had your fill of pirate stuff yet? I had to mention my friend Shipwreck" Shelly Neal, who made the awesome cane you see below. The scull & crossbones design runs all the way through the cane, and is sliced like a jelly roll for use in jewelry or other applications. Reducing the cane size without too much distortion is no easy task. Shelly makes it look easy.

You can see by the grid lines that this cane measured at least 3 1/2 inches across before reducing it's size.

Check out the bracelet she made with some of the smaller slices. Well done Shelly!

Beads of Courage & Hearts for Heroes

A great outreach project we work on at the guild retreat is the Beads of Courage Program. This program is for children undergoing treatment for cancer and other serious illnesses. Children tell their story using colorful beads as meaningful symbols of courage that commemorate milestones they have achieved along their unique treatment path. You can read more about this program on their website: http://www.beadsofcourage.org/. In August they received a Pepsi grant of $25,000. Way to go!
While making these beads is an ongoing project of our guild throughout the year, you can see the ones we made at the retreat below.

Our other outreach project is Hearts for Heroes. Small heats are sent to deployed troops as a reminder that they are loved and appreciated and to thank  them for their service to our country. Below, are some of the hearts we made. They have a website too. http://www.hearts4heroes.com/.
Below are some of the hearts we made.