Craft Show Debut

Happy July 4th!  With it legally being next Wednesday it looks like we might

be celebrating the holiday for at least a week.  good!  the more fireworks the

better in my book.

This year I decided to celebrate with a "soft debut" into the craft show world.

I like to say I am an artist which implies 2d work.  But I have to confess to a

lifelong love of crafts of all kinds.  And sometimes my joy in making them

exceeds the number of folks I have to give christmas gifts to and they seem to pile up

and take on a life of their own....

Enter the world of craft shows and sales....

Please join us in the Town of Seven Devils for our annual BBQ and Craft Fair

to benefit our hardworking police and fire departments.

June 30 - Saturday - 10 am until 3 pm

I'll have my (current obsession) glass garden flowers available:

for only $20.00 apiece!

as well as my river rock jewelry :

(so inexpensive it's embarrassing to print the prices)

and some crazy, fun earrings (et al) made from colorful clay:

very affordable gifts and stocking stuffers!

Besides, since I've never done a show/fair/sale before I could use some friendly

faces of encouragement dropping by.

For my friends out of range from 7D let me know what you want...I can ship; haven't had time to put any of this on etsy yet!

Have a safe fourth!

With a Little Help From My Friends

See this lovely, one-of-a-kind necklace I am wearing?  Gorgeous, no?  Well, it beautifully

illustrates only ONE of the many reasons I love spending one day a week with

fellow artists.

This piece is made from polymer clay and until Kathy Garvey convinced us

we could combine our talents for a special piece of jewelry I had never worked with the stuff.

Little did Kath know the challenge she faced in getting 7 other women to sit down

and learn a new skill.

We were all thumbs!  But with her patience and our perserverence

we each succeeded in making a unique "charm" in black and white.

For clay artists these are known as canes, a long roll (like cookie dough) that is

then sliced very thinly and pierced and baked.

Each of us then had one "charm" made by everyone else...and Kathy managed to take our scraps (of which there was a huge pile) and piece together some additional little jewels.  Above is the work table on the day we gathered to create the masterpiece necklace. 

Oh my, it took hours to do what pros do in a heartbeat...but it was educational and

entertaining as we each created something totally different from anyone else.

Eye-catching no?  Truely fun to wear and a

real conversation piece.  Whew...new respect for those artists that work with

clay of any kind as well as those who spend their day with the tiny parts and pieces that

jewelry demands.

I'll love wearing my work of art not only because it is beautiful but because it

reminds me that like so much else in life, I would not have it without

a little help from my friends.



I can't stop myself....

I've got it bad, I know I do!  Sometimes we need to be saved from ourselves.  Stones now occupy every facet of my creative mind and if someone doesn't stop me soon I may ....who knows??  Anyway, thought I would share the latest shiny object that caught my attention.

I had contacted a jeweler in NC with the idea of him making me a couple of tiny cairns out of river stones...he thought he could so I commissed two of them and have really enjoyed them.  About a year later I was playing with stones on the banks of the Watagua River and had the bright idea (!) of making a keychain.  As usually happens,

one thing led to another and before I knew it I was playing around with the cairns myself...as well as earrings and whathaveyous.

I was blowing drill bits like crazy (not to mention stones) so just for the heck of it decided to see if I could "make" stones out of polymer clay. 

These proved to be much more lightweight.

I've got friends "product testing" the keychains in clay to see how they holdup; the earrings are fun to wear, long and dangly and the pendants say "river gal" all over them.  Oh, I did stick pins, flat pins and have a request for hair sticks.  I have short hair so these may pose a challenge but as soon as they are finished the clay goes back into the (back of the) closet.

Whew!  Glad I got that out of my system!