Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Bead Embroidery

This is my first attempt at bead embroidery and I loved doing this, even though it was very time consuming. This was made with lots of love for my DH who has encouraged me in many areas of my life, in our 40 years together. This piece will not be for sale.

Click on pictures for larger view.





Thanks for looking.












More Crocheted Wire Creations

Good morning Friends ~ It is another gray, drippy day here today as we are getting the stormy weather from Ana. At least she's not a hurricane and Bill is going to be headed northward, and hopefully stay totally out to sea.

Between work, homecaring and gardening I've created some more little wire baskets. I love how these turned out.

Working with wire and beads is challenging, fun and rewarding. I've been checking websites for copper wire and nickel wire in 34 gauge, and prices vary. Nickel is more expensive than copper.

Here are some pictures of these latest creations.


Click on pictures for a larger view.












These open baskets were the first ones I made.



Thank you for looking.





Sunday, August 2, 2009

A sometime dabbler in watercolors

It has been a long, long time since I painted. I painted quite a lot for years, then lost momentum, and just haven't gotten back into it. I recently looked at a briefcase full of them that I had stashed and feel I would paint differently these days. I'm not the same person I was then. I do have some miniature paintings of birds that I like though, and a watercolor of a lady.

When I painted I signed them Rainey as that is my nickname.

This is a quail.

This is pretty close to the actual size of it.

I just held the painting up to my monitor and this picture here is just a tad longer.



This next one is a close-up, so you can see the details.
Click on pictures for a larger view.


Here is the lady. She is 2 1/2" wide by 3 1/4" tall.





Like I said, I'm a sometime dabbler in watercolors. Maybe I'll get out my paper and watercolors again, who knows. I have so many things I'm doing. Working part-time, home-caring, gardening, and other handiwork for my little shop. I have to be in the mood to paint. Starting out with a blank piece of paper is intimidating.

Thanks for looking.





Pretty Paper Boxes



Good morning blogging friends. It's a new day here, hot and humid as usual. I was out for a while weeding, but decided enough is enough and here I am.

I wanted to show you the pretty boxes I made the other day after seeing a video on Etsy. Once you make one of these, I think you'll be hooked on making more. They were easy and fun!!

I could hardly get to sleep the night I watched this little video for thinking about how to make a nice paper for the box. The next day I made my paper by picking out floral clip-art, placing them on the page how I wanted them, saved the project, then went into a photo program and made the work less opaque, by about half, so that it would be softer looking and use less ink. :-)

I will use the left over paper to make tags.

This is all done by folding the paper, so there are uniform creases in your paper, you can see them in the picture. You only make 4 cuts, no glue. They are 3" x 3" x1 1/2". Here is the link to the video.

Making boxes