What did you do in the snow, Mommy?

Resin! I've been wanting to do this for so long... I took a class a couple of years ago and fooled around with what I learned. Then, one day, while sorting through a bag of dried roses, and found a bottle cap. An article in this month's Wire Jewelry magazine gave me the impetus to make this....I pasted a tiny picture of a rose on the bottom and filled in with beads and wires, covering it all with resin. I had always imagined filling it with rose petals, but i think I like this better. I caught a couple of tiny bubbles in the resin, not good thing, but I got rid of most of them. For a first try, this turned out pretty well!

Here is the original bottle cap:
If you look at the bottom left of the cap, you will see that it is from Pakistan, the same place my roses came from! And interesting to note, the ingredients list says nothing at all about either high fructose corn syrup or aspartame... only in America!

Okay, off the soapbox. While I had the resin mixed up, I made a couple more little charms with some of the bezels I just got from Rings 'n Things:These tiny pictures were cut from scrapbooking paper & coated with Elmer's glue. I added just one tiny matching bead to each one and then filled with resin. I think they'd make a great addition to a charm bracelet or a cute little necklace charm.

So, that's what I did in the snow... Now, to the torch!

Leaf Earrings

I had a request for some new "leaf earrings", so during the snow, I made a few pairs:

Bronze:
Turquoise:

Lily of the Valley:

Lilac Ice:

Hematite:

& Dark Teal:

These are fun to put together. I make such a mess as I paw through all my beads, finding combinations that I can't wait to put together!

After the storm

I can't resist. There are just so many gorgeous pictures from the snow!

The one on the left is my favorite. Icicles hanging on the shop. They look almost magical as the sun turns them into prisms! I love icicles even though they can sometimes seem to be daggers ready to fall.

Below, the picture on the right is a scene Tina pointed out to me... our wisteria vine, so gnarled and twisted, covered with snow and icicles hanging above.. The contrasts in this one reminded me of some kind of modern painting. Nature is amazing!

I walked out to see that the winds we thought might undo all Bob's work yesterday had hardly made a difference in our driveway.

The shop is almost hidden behind all the piles of snow. The cars, which were completely dug out only a day or so ago are back to being buried under the new snow.

You can see Tina's house up on the hill to the right. It looks pretty close, right? Well, apparently when one is basically "swimming" through the snow with no gloves, hat or suitable shoes it is miles and miles and very frightening - especially as the snow is still swirling!

The sky has become so blue after days of heavy gray. It looks warm and comforting, but I suspect if we went out on the roads right now, it would still seem a bit threatening.
As I got closer, I saw all the icicles hanging from the eaves...
Now that I'm out here, I have some work to do. So off I go to mix lye for soap to be made later in the week and to light the torch for another day of bead making, but first, I had to share some of the beauty of this most recent storm.

Da Beads

So, after all that absence, now I post twice in one day.

Yesterday, as I waited for the kiln to ramp up, I decided to make a few murini. I have done this before, but I got some pretty good results yesterday.

This brown flower murini seemed to work perfectly on this bead - I think It's my favorite of the day:This one got a little smeared. I wasn't totally prepared to make the bead and that may account for the messiness of it. I kinda went with the flow instead of having everything I needed at the ready!
I was thinking of adding a murini to this one, but I had grabbed an unknown stringer to play around in the background. I think it turned out to be a stringer of a glass called "magic" and it seemed to be coming out so beautifully that I decided not to mess it up!
Finally, I had actually made this bead toward the end of last year with a dusting of enamel and another of the murinis I made before and don't think I ever showed it before.
I sure hope I can get back to the torc regularly now... just as soon as we get caught up with the soap!

Life Goes On

It'a been so long since I've posted, but January slipped past in a blur of hospitals and sorrow. We lost our brother John on February 2, after a 4-year fight with liver disease.

The weather held mostly clear for us as we traveled back and forth from home to hospital and back, finally bringing him home for a few precious days before we could no longer care for him at home and he was taken to Hospice.

The day he died, we walked out of Hospice into a light dusting of snow. My sister and I looked at each other realizing how lucky we were that we had not had to deal with weather during this and all the other times we have had to take him in for standard or emergency treatment. Even when we were traveling back and forth to Philly, the bad weather always seemed to dance around us, but never gave us a problem.

Friday night, it began to snow in earnest and we woke to 20" on the ground with more to come. This is the scene from our garage door:
It was such a relief to know that there was nothing to worry about and that we could just watch it and enjoy the beauty.

After it stopped snowing, my personal hero, my husband Bob plowed us out and opened the way to the shop.I cleared the snow away from the air vent and made my first beads of the new year.

They should be annealed by now and when I clean them, good or bad, they'll be posted here.

I am the oldest and John was the second oldest in our band of 5 kids. I remember the day he was born. It is hard to believe, after all this time that we never got the happy ending we were hoping for, but life goes on and I know that John would want us to live our lives to the fullest.