The Craft Daily

So busy lately

I'll be back soon! In the meantime, I love this. :-)

Source: google.com via Catherine on Pinterest

 

 

Just playing around

One of my new years resolutions was to focus on creativty - creating for the sake of creating. No financial goals in mind, and hopefully unblock the creative rut I seem to be in. My daughter Maya loves art, and spending time playing around with her seems like a great way to achieve those goals. On Sunday morning we pulled out the paints, and paper and made these.

Maya - Acrylic paint on Canvas paper

 

Jennifer - Mixed media. Acrylic paint, canvas paper, tissue paper, gel medium.

We planned this a little in advance, so on Friday night I went through my art supply bins. We didn't really have much in the way of paint, and on Saturday we planned a trip to Curry's. Yikes paint is expensive! No wonder artists are starving....And this is coming from someone who creates in precious metals. I was shocked, truly shocked at the prices of teeny little bottles of paint.What was even more shocking was I had a coupon for Micheals - 20% off your entire purchase coupon. I almost had a heart attack at the prices at Michaels. The same products at Curry's were less than half what Michaels wanted. Seriously though, somewhere between $4 - $9 for 1oz of paint. (Curry's prices). Now I know this was professional quality paint - and yes, you can get cheaper paint. I do believe in using good quality materials - I may have to rethink this though. :-)

Maya and I had a long talk about taking care of her art supplies. At those prices, she really needs to understand that they're precious.

Luna and Sam

We have a tiny new addition to our family. Maya, our oldest has been pestering my husband for months to get a kitten. We already have a dog, and my husband has alergies. He's lived with cats before - so his allergies are not too serious. Certainly liveable :-)  He finally gave in, and now we have Sam. 

He's certainly entertaining - this picture was taken during a 1 hour (yes, a full hour) session of him attacking our light.

Here he is trying to take over Luna's favourite chair. I can assure you, Luna was not impressed.

A little update

Yes, it's been a while again. I have been so neglectful in keeping up with the blog, but I really do hope to post more this year.  I've had a bit of a rough holiday healthwise, and at some point this year, I'll be going in for a fairly major operation. Who knows how long it will take to get this scheduled.

So, the soap shop is closed indefinately, as I just don't have the energy to keep up with orders. I probably won't be listing much in the jewelry shop either, but I'll keep it open as the one or 2 sales I get a month - I'm pretty sure I can keep up with :-)

What will I be doing? I've been thinking about that quite a bit over the holidays - with Dan working full time, I can relax a bit, and focus on me for a while. Take time to get better, learn new techniques, and simply make things for the sake of making them. There are so many things that I've wanted to learn how to do. Enameling on metal, mixed media techniques that I can then incorporate in jewelry, refocussing on lampworking, and metal clay without any financial goals in mind - It's time to take the pressure off, and just make art.

Til next time - and I do hope next time won't be a month from now!

 

And here comes fall

This year has been a complete blur. Really, I don't think I've ever experienced anything quite like this. I've finally got the kids back into school, and daycare. And now that it's fall, I'm completely endrenched in paperwork. I'm hoping to be completely done sometime within the next few weeks - whew...

I have taken a bit of time to do some fun stuff - Like the glass tile pendant tutorial which you can buy at beadfx, a few torch sessions here and there, and my latest tangent - Copper Pipe Pendants!

 


I've listed a few of these up on etsy, and I'm considering writing a tutorial for them once I have a bit more time. These we're done as one of my blog posts for beadFX The Thursday topics on the blog are keeping me on my toes creatively.

I'm not sure if I'll be able to reopen the soap shop this fall - I just have too many other things that need my attention, and I've already learned my lesson a few times over by stretching myself to thin. I'm not ready to say never though, so we'll see what happens.

New blog post on the beadFX blog

You might be interested in checking it out - plus, I think I can only manage one blog post per day ;-) - off to work on orders!

http://beadfx.blogspot.com/2010/07/more-playing-around-part.html

Kids home....

And so the summer begins. This is the first full week of both of my kids home for the summer. Dan and I had a war meeting last night to discuss just how we were going to manage to both attempt to work from home, while keeping a 5 and 7 year old busy and out of trouble. Unfortunately, we haven't yet come up with anything that is really all that workable. We've discussed taking turns on kid duty, or letting them fend for themselves in the backyard for a couple hours while we both work - and then doing family time in the afternoon.

As I type this, I've been interrupted 5 times, with discussions about the silliness of not allowing anyone else in your club house, where fairies live, sharks teeth - which type of shark would be the most dangerous, why haven't you taught me how to cook yet? - and why can't I have oreo's for breakfast?  

If I manage even one more post this summer, I'll be completely amazed :-)

Fan page on facebook

I made a fan page for jenniferbeads on facebook last night. Class listings, and photos posted hopefully fairly regularly :-)  Search on facebook for jenniferbeads!

too long yet again!

I apologize for being so quiet as of late - I've got a few projects that I'm trying to get finished up, and it's taking most of my free time.

In other news - my girls are now finished school for the year! We celebrated with a trip to the zoo yesterday, and both had the opportunity to pet a sting ray, and take their first pony ride :-)

I'm also anxious to get back on the torch - I managed to pick up a cool sample pack of all Odd lot colours from vetrofond - and some look very interesting indeed.  I've noticed quite a few of the colours have a different coloured core - which usually indicates that some sort of cool reaction will take place - good or bad ;-)

And one more little exciting little packaged arrived - A few patinad pieces of chain and findings from Miss Fickle Media

I can't wait to make something with these - I just love the verdigris patina on copper!

I'm off - Need to find out just where they're doing Fireworks in Whitby tonight, and attempt to clean the disaster area my house has become! ;-)

Big, Big sale coming up!

Today was the Elkhorn school funfair, and yes, we had a ton of fun (brought the girls with us), but we didn't exactly sell too much :-) Dan, the girls, and I seriously added to our library at the fair. The fair featured a booksale. The day started with the books being sold for 2 for $1. By the end of the day, the books were reduced further to 10 for $1. Awesome!

As such, I have a ton of soap stock to offload. Stay tuned on Tuesday for a complete listing of what I have left. Prices will be 50% off the regular price, plus actual cost shipping. I'll explain the details of how it will all work with the inventory posting on Tuesday.

In the meantime, I did manage to get a pair of copper jellyfish earrings listed tonight. I love these, and made myself a pair as well. :-)