Dots of Color

This is pretty cool.  A show I’m going to be in this December designed and furnished website banners for all of the participating artists to incorporate into their own websites, should they so desire.  Two or three of their designs feature MY artwork!  This is one of the designs (the same image that’s in my banner above):

Pretty awesome, huh!  I don’t know how the rest of the participants in the One of  a Kind Show feel about using someone else’s artwork on their website, but I’m pretty stoked.  The show is run by and held at the Merchandise Mart in downtown Chicago.  It’s a pretty big operation, and I have to say that they do lots and lots of promotion for it.  They will also be using this image on shopping bags that are furnished at the show.  How cool is that!  Thank you, thank you to Larry Sanders of Sanders Visual Images here in Milwaukee for taking such great photos of my work.  He’s a very talented artists’ photographer (obviously) and a really nice person as well.

Oh, and Happy Halloween everybody!!!

Nothing’s much worse than waking up in the morning and realising that you have a dental appointment that day.  I’ve disliked going to the dentist’s since I was a little girl, despite the bribery with toys at the end of the appointment.  I know I’m not alone here.  I have to leave shortly, but I wanted to post a couple of pictures.  These are pieces that contain no polymer clay, which is a recent departure for me.  The materials are sterling, felt and red garnets.  The necklace is stranded on a rope of crocheted garnet beads and the pendant is made of sterling and felt with more garnets hand-sewn to the felt.  Same with the little earrings.  I don’t know whether they’re supposed to look like raspberries or strawberries – or neither.  But I loved the color of these garnet beads.  They’re much more purple-y than most garnets, which are usually a red that leans towards the warm, yellow side of the spectrum.Time to get ready to go to the dentists: brush my teeth and blow my nose.  (That last one is from my Mom, who worked as a dental hygienist when she was younger.  She said that they can see up your nose when they’re working on your teeth so it’s just as important as having a clean mouth!  Thanks, Mom.)

Hope your day’s better than mine.

These aren’t the best in the world, but they’re the best I can do for now.  This is a brooch I made of fabricated sterling silver, polymer clay and glass seed beads.  It comes with its own little polymer clay stand, so it can be a sculpture when it’s not being worn.  I try to have several of these in my case during shows so they look like a little garden all standing together.  I know the lighting in the photo is pretty bad.  Like I said, I have some issues (with cameras and with computers) - I’m still learning.

Then, this is a new bracelet, like the one in my header.  These are made with big felt beads with lots of different polymer and felt beads tucked in between.  I hand-dye the wool for the felt beads.  I embellish the smaller felt beads with glass seed beads and either vintage sequins or sequins made of polymer clay. 

Needless to say, these bracelets can take many, many hours (all very enjoyable) to create.  Which reminds me, I have a show coming up the beginning of December in Chicago.  I should be working on building my inventory for the show instead of playing on the computer!  Later, guys!!