Alenka's Butterfly Birthday Blog Hop and Giveaway

Happy belated birthday, Alenka, and thanks for inviting us to help you celebrate in a special way!

Butterflies represent so many concepts to so many people. Over time, my perception has evolved... of these tiny denizens who live out such short but significant lives. The above maxim sums up my latest reflection on the power of butterflies to adapt. 

I have a serious love/love relationship with butterflies (possibly heightened by our never-ending winter... we see very few in my part of the world). So when Alenka Obid of Pepita Handmade suggested a butterfly-themed blog hop on the occasion of her birthday, I was at the head of the line!  I have been collecting a few goodies in preparation.

Earlier this week. I gave a sneak peak at the beginnings of this polymer clay cane (from this tutorial):

... which has been transformed into this small (2" high) sculpted piece (final design to be determined).

Awhile back, I received some beautiful handmade papers from a blogging colleague, Kathy. I will use some for beads, but I thought recycled paper would be a perfect medium for the chameleon butterfly. I don't do a lot of work in paper craft, so naturally I came up with a layered design which can later be developed into jewelry (surprise!)

Handmade paper coated with liquid polymer clay

My final medium is glass. I have been greedily collecting these awesome little lampwork butterfly wings by Kim Snider (a fellow Maritime Canadian):

My photo is sadly not showing the beauty of Kim's wings. If you fancy owning a few of these sweeties (and to ogle her amazing photos), do check out her online Facebook auction starting Thursday April 23rd and running through Sunday night (click on the JOIN key to take part). *Updated to the latest show date*

I forced myself to choose ONE of these wings and created a necklace with copper-wired pearls and a bit of kumihimo:

And here is the gang all together (well, I did have one other project planned, but my little butterfly-shaped metal components didn't arrive in time. *They finally arrived! See this post):

Thank you so much Alenka for inviting us to be part of your Butterfly Birthday Hop! 

And thank you everyone for reading this far. Please check these blogs for more beautiful butterfly inspiration! 

1. Alenka - hostess  Pepita Handmade

2. Monique A Half-Baked Notion*YOU ARE HERE*

3. Beti Horvath Stringing Fool

4. Kathy Lindemer BayMoonDesign

5. Kepi A little of this, a little of that

6. Christine Altmiller One Kiss Creations

7. Amy S. Amybeads

8. Dini Bruinsma  Angaza by Changes

9. Cynthia (Antiquity Travelers) Antiquity Travelers

10. Alicia http://www.allprettythings.ca/*posting in a few days*

11. Sheilaposter Cats With Beads

12. Therese Frank Therese's Treasures

13. Rebecca White Morganafeycreations

14. Rachel Mallis Mint Monarch

15. Liz E Bead Contagion

16. Ana (ACBeads) AC Beads Jewellery

17. Jasvanti Patel Jewelry by Jasvanti

18. Carolyn Carolyn's Creations
19. Nan Smith Wired Nan

Polymer Clay Challenge Week 14

For Week 14 of Katie Oskin's polymer clay challenge, I can only share a teaser! These rather unspectacular canes were the start of a complex cane, which I will share this Saturday, April 11th on the occasion of Alenka's Birthday Blog Hop and Giveaway.

This was a first for me. I mixed my own mica colours in Kato, using recipes found on the Shades of Clay website, so I am anxious to see how they will look once baked. All will be revealed this Saturday (plus a few more themed surprises).

Hope to see you then!

CC7A Rebirth for 2015

Happy Easter everyone!

Late in 2013, Alicia Marinache of All the Pretty Things proposed a small group of us exchange components and choose themes for a friendly design challenge, and The Creative Continuum of Seven Artists (CC7A) was born. Once a month last year, we seven designed around a component provided by one member for each month.

Wanting to keep the fun going, Alicia sent out pretty donuts in a variety of semi-precious stones in Christmas cards, with the suggestion that we use them as inspiration for a another round of designs. Unfortunately, the cards to U.S. destinations were all missing their donuts when they arrived. But everyone came up with a replacement and the challenge continues!

Mine is the pretty pink quartz on the left :)

Over the first part of 2015, I decided to overhaul my sewing/crafting/jewelry studio, which is actually a huge 14' x 16' spare room. Crammed with decades of fabric (from a part-time career as a seamstress), four sewing machines, ironing boards and presses; plus the leftovers from various other fibre arts I have enjoyed; finally everything overlaid with the material of the newest period of my crafting life: beads, beads, beads... and more beads. When Alicia's Christmas card and donut arrived, they had been matched with some other beads and carefully put aside... SOMEWHERE.

Reveal day (March 28th) found me, not only unprepared, but still searching for my missing treasure. It was only when I stopped "looking" that they mysteriously reappeared. (OK, I was actually digging for something completely unrelated LOL). So I was finally able to sit and create.

A bracelet. 

Of course :)

I actually wore it several times over the Easter weekend before remembering to get photos. April 4th, the Saturday before Easter, saw a late-season snow storm that left behind an extra foot of the white stuff. Today it is sunny so I took an extra photo in the front yard:

Yes, that is fresh white snow in the background, covering a 5' bank still lingering here in New Brunswick. 

I didn't have the waxed linen colours I wanted for my design, so my embroidery thread collection came to the rescue. It isn't as durable as the linen but super comfy and I have it in hundreds of colours. A couple of lampwork beads by Juli Cannon were a perfect match to the donut, and various Indonesian glass beads from Yukidesigns finished the project. The colours say spring even if I have to wait a few more weeks/months for the temperatures to agree :)

Here are the other members of CC7A:

Alicia Marinache (Hostess)

Christine Altmiller

Cynthia Machata

Emma Todd

Sally Russick

Therese Frank

I think our next CC7A get-together will be April 26th, when we will be inspired by a photograph Alicia has chosen and a colour palette called "Pastel Spring". See you then!

Polymer Clay Challenge Week 13

For Week 13 of Katie Oskin's polymer clay challenge, I am featuring both a handmade mold (from scrap clay... Kato makes awesome molds which capture every detail); and also some resulting cabochons. They were formed inside inexpensive pendant trays so they could be made into easy pendants. However, I haven't yet decided if these will be buttons. I painted them with alcohol inks before baking.

I have a small collection of handmade molds, mostly from
interesting old buttons which had seen better days :)

Well, the long winter finally seems to be yielding bit by bit to warmer days and disappearing snowbanks (hooray!) Let's hope the green grass and early flowers are close behind!

Hope to see everyone next week for more PC creations :) 

Polymer Clay Challenge Week 12

For Week 12 of Katie Oskin's polymer clay challenge, I am doing a super fast post as my internet is kinda iffy this week. Fingers crossed. I skipped Week 11 since my son (the one in the military) and his girlfriend were here for a week-long visit (yay!) 

This is Meg Newberg's Cane Builder design for April 2015 (available by subscription at the link or individually at her Etsy shop). I literally sat down and started to build it within minutes of receiving it. Sorry about the photo quality. Overdue for a new camera and accepting recommendations :)

  

Hope to see you next week!