A New Inspirational Book by Kelly Rae Roberts and Repurposed Necklace

Over the holidays I received a Barnes and Noble gift card and went to town looking for some art books for inspiration and instruction in my art. I ordered this book "Taking Flight Inspiration and Techniques to give your Creative Spirit Wings" by Kelly Rae Roberts and started reading it a couple days ago. With  a soon to be two year old I only get a couple pages down a day but how inspiring they have been. She writes like she is talking to my heart. I feel like a friend is talking to me and urging me to push myself more. Sometimes it's hard to know if other people feel like you do, if they struggle with things like you do. She has written and expressed so much about how I feel and what I think it's almost scary. As I explore more into this world of creating I have come to realize there are A LOT of women out there that feel like I do. I would recommend this book to everyone that wants to know more about themselves and where they want to be with their creative lives. I think our hearts sing when someone understands us and your heart will sing with this book. I was inspired to create a couple paintings that I will share over the next week or so.

Here's my jewelry work area, I don't know how I get anything made. I remember a quote that says " Creative people are seldom tidy". Hello that is me once I get started.

Well at least something came out of it here's my newest creation.

I love the colors in this necklace. This may be a keeper pretty much like almost everything I make.

My Red Bling

I've kind of gotten into this red thing lately so I thought I would do a little "show and tell". I made these last week and have fallen in love with them. I've worn them with everything and they add a little pop of color.

The stone is a faceted rice shaped ruby with a cultured pearl and vintage ab rhinestone spacers.

This pair has small cultured pearls, faceted rubies with a vintage brass finding and a small pink bicone at the top, that I can now see is almost impossible to detect in the picture. I used smaller pearl head pins I bought a month ago on both pair. Love the Victorian feel these have.

Anyway here is a call for info. I desperately need to go to an artist retreat over the summer. This would be my second year to go to something. Last year I blogged about a retreat I took in Durango and I had a great time but want something different this year. I need something sort of in the state or near it. My Dh is a Principal and only is available in the summer to watch our son. They need some boy time and I need a vacation. I think it really helps me stay sane and him understand what it takes to take care of a child pretty much 24/7. The last one I went on was three days and when I got back they couldn't get enough of me ;P I know a lot of women think they couldn't leave like that but believe me it makes a huge difference in our lives when I return. Everything I do is more appreciated and I love and adore my time with them more. So please HELP!!! LOL

Repurposed Necklaces and OWOH New Friends

I just want to say thank you to all of the new followers and everyone who came to visit after I left a comment on their blogs. I went around on that Wonderful OWOH blog hop and had so much fun seeing everyones blogs. I think I have over a hundred new blogs to follow now, I just couldn't help myself. I'm sad this is the last year though. I didn't know about it till 5 days ago and have been to 400+ blogs for visits. I'm going to try and complete the list even though it is officially over. What a blast! I am so excited by my new followers and hope I never bore you and your just on the tip of your seat waiting for my next post. I will warn though my grammar stinks and sometimes things seem so funny to me and fail to translate .

Anyway I realized I had failed to post two newer necklaces I made and wanted to do a little show and tell.

This is a vintage pendant  that I put on an assemblage necklace. The brass curb chain is textured and so beautiful then I added some vintage book chain and glass pearls with rhinestones. I've listed this one in my etsy store. www.repurposedbeauty.etsy.com hopefully this link works someone told me they had a hard time with the other link. This next necklace is a repurposed brooch into a pendant on some more book chain and a vintage Napier necklace. The pendant is much more beautiful in person.

Sorry it's a little blurry. I went to a couple thrift stores today to search out some new jewelry to repurpose. I thought I would also post a little picture of a project I did of my son Brayden and dog Frasier.

I made these for my husband's 90 year old grandpa because what do you get someone turning 90. He adores them, I also made a set for us and my DH dad. I just love them every time I walk by them they make me smile.

Then lastly, if anyone has any suggestions to improve my blog let me know. I started this almost a year ago but haven't done much with it and need to figure out the buttons and badges well maybe I don't need any stinking badges LOL. I hope you get that! Bye

Birds Nest Painting

This is my newest painting to go with the blue bird I did a little while ago. I love all the texture of the nest. I used torn tissue paper and sealed it with gel medium.  The vintage music and lyrics are from an old Bing Crosby song. I highlighted a section of lyrics with pencil that says "But it brings back sweet memories of you." Around the painting there are definitions for wish, memory and dream. There are several layers of paint then I removed some sections with sanding. I used hard candy crackle paint by Tim Holtz on the music then antiqued the areas with brown paint. Sorry for the slight blurriness if the photo I need a new camera. I am happy with how it turned out and am listing this one for sale on etsy. I'm still holding on to the blue bird though! ;) More birds for the next paintings. Guess I'm wishing for spring already. I love to garden and be outside and now that my son is a little older we'll be out a lot more than last year.

My Garden

I've been in the house I live in now for about a little over eleven years. I started to put in some perennials when I first moved in and as plants have died I've found different ones that work for me. I have a 250 square foot section just for veggies every year. In the rest of the yard I have 2 kinds of grapes, blackberries, rhubarb and a peach tree. I planted one of those trees that has several different kinds of apples on one tree and by this spring we should have a great crop. Around the yard I have lavender which I highly recommend. I love to go and just brush my fingers through it and get the smell of the lavender. Some years I hang it to dry and put a bunch of it on presents I give. I have a whole herb garden on my patio and then some throughout the yard too. My sage bush comes back every year and if I cover my rosemary right sometimes it will also. I have a large lemon balm bush but haven't really used it a lot but it is a nice plant for the yard. My peppermint just goes nuts and I have to really thin it back but when the dogs run through it they smell great for a little while. I have three shih tzu's. Frasier my male is on the header for my etsy shop. The funny thing is I have found several shops with shih tzu headers or avatars too. Ashley and Madison are the two females. If we had a bigger house we would probably have two more. We always joke about having a shih tzu farm, not for breeding just for having. They're the neatest dogs I have ever owned. Anyway, every year I pretty much plant close to everything you can imagine in the vegetable garden except corn. In southern Colorado area we get fabulous sweet corn from the farmers and it takes up too much room anyway. When we move I'll start with more fruit trees as soon as we move in. I really have never understood why people don't have at least one fruit tree in their yard. I eat organic whenever possible so I like to grow what I can. Shallots are so expensive in the store  and I really like the flavor so I do two rows of those and if I don't get to them they just come up next year. When the spring comes I'll start to show pictures. We will probably do giant pumpkins this year for my son. We've done them before and the largest was 74lbs. Enough with the gardening for now.

New recipe and new art

I've recently got in a shipment of brass findings and have started to do some necklaces. I've never really used focals like this before. I love the vintage look and style and want to really show that in my work. Please pray for me though, everything I make I want to keep! I need to either sell some stuff or get another neck. Some of the beads and other findings I'm adding are vintage and some are new. I love being able to re-purpose old jewelry into new. Some pieces are so dated with their look but are really still useful to re-purpose. I like that everything doesn't need to be new and fresh. Pearls can have paint missing and chain can be worn.

Anyway I made this wonderful chicken recipe I got from watching Martha Stewart. She had on several guys that own their own restaurants in NY. One of them had a recipe for Buffalo chicken wing meatballs. I tried it and wow! I love them, no mess when eating them and the same great taste but a little less fat because you don't use the skins and they aren't fried you cook them in the oven. I used chicken breasts 2 lb and I cut it up in 2 in pieces then put it in my food processor and got it to a nice large grind. I did 2 ribs of celery the same way but a fine dice. Then added in a bowl 1 2/3 c bread crumbs(I just used what was on hand progresso Italian), 2 eggs, 2 tsp salt to the chicken and celery. I melted 1 stick butter in saucepan and then added the 1 c Franks original hot sauce mixed and used a 2 inch cookie scoop for the meatball size. I rolled them and placed them touching and came up with 46 meatballs on a cookie sheet then cooked them for 20 min at 450. I made my own blue cheese sauce instead of the regular blue cheese salad dressing. It was 2/3 c blue cheese, 1/2 c sour cream, 1-8oz cream cheese and 1/2c franks sauce in a sauce pan and heated till the cheese melted stirring constantly. It makes it much more intense than just mixing the ingredients and serving it cold. But once the sauce it done the first time and we ate more for a different meal I didn't heat it again. These turned out really spicy and so good. I would try it with the original before you go spicier or you could even put sauce over the top after they're cooked. This recipe was so much faster than doing the wings and about 5 fill you up where most people eat about 10 wings.