Treasury Happiness

Oh, I am SO happy! Not long ago I was featured in my first treasury on Etsy and yesterday.... I finally managed to capture a treasury slot of my very own! No longer will I need to watch and wait, like a lion ready to pounce on it's prey, trying to capture one. I was so shocked that I actually procured one (unlike the ten million other times I've tried), that I didn't have anything prepped to fill it. I had been watching cute little sparrows and chickadees trying to find food in the snow outside through my kitchen window, so I decided to go with "Little Bird, oh Sweet Little Bird" as a theme. Think I'm ready for Spring :)

P.S. The transformed bride in the prior post's challenge is Mata Hari :)

Blogger Craft Challenge #2

The blog challenge issued by Beachys Cape Cod was to create something using this vintage wedding photo and share with everyone today on your blog.Having essentially no printer, just a 10 year old cranky b&w bottom-of-the-line doorstop, I opted to do a digital submission (it's my first digital piece!). And it being almost Valentine's day, decided to do something full of romance.The photo I used to transform the bride is fairly well known ... anybody recognize it? See more great entries for this blogger art challenge here.

Studio News

I've recently been watching Season 1 of The Tudors on DVD, so I was thrilled to find this quiz featured over at my friend Deb's blog! Have you ever wondered which wife of Henry the VIII you are most like?? Take this quiz and find out! This is what mine said:

Katherine Parr spent nearly her whole life married to crotchety old men: Henry was the THIRD old fart she was forced to marry. Is it any wonder she turned to books and religion to occupy her time?

Katherine wasn't just smart, she was a tiny bit uppity, too: she almost got herself thrown in jail for arguing with His Royal Fatness about some theological issues. After Henry croaked, Katherine dropped the prim and proper act and married Thomas Seymour, a handsome, dashing pirate kind of guy who was also as dumb as a post.
My husband got a great kick out of this. He wanted to know if he was the crotchety old man or the handsome, dumb pirate :)

As promised, new designs are rolling out of the studio for the start of the new year. My favorites so far are the Damascus hand-inked earrings. The classic version has the hand-inked abstract floral designs in a rusty red with a beautifully aged golden shimmer. These look like old treasures found in a jewelry box in the attic. The deluxe version adds sparkling burgundy crystals to the bottom.I also love these new charming Garden Sparrow earrings with vintage brass bird charms. I just love the look of vintage brass jewelry - I adore everything Art Nouveau - and am thrilled to offer these! All of the earrings I've been designing are super lightweight. After so many years of intricate chandelier earrings, I was ready to design some classier, easier-to-wear pieces. I've also decided to move on from the standard plain white background for product shots. It is so much more fun to use old books and fun papers! And you can communicate so much more about the mood of a piece!

If I seem a bit absent from blogland recently, it's because most of my studio time is currently being taken up doing accounting, getting ready for tax time. Accounting is not my special gift, so it's taking a looooong time, but I hope to be done by next week and back to visiting!

My First Treasury!

I logged into my etsy account on Saturday to discover the most wonderful surprise - a lovely fellow etsian, mosaicart, had featured a pair of my earrings in her beautiful Treasury! This is the first Treasury I have ever been featured in and I was just thrilled! I took a snapshot - Can you see me?I'm the one at the bottom left :) I haven't been able to snag a Treasury yet myself. Not that I haven't spent a lot of time waiting, sitting and watching that countdown! Hopefully, with a little luck, someday soon :)

For anybody who wants to know how to get a full screen snapshot of a Treasury, this is how to do it (these instructions are for a PC):
1) Press F11 to get the image the same size as the screen
2) Press PrntScrn (Printscreen)
3) Go to your photo or image editing software and click paste.
4) You're done!

I also received the "You Make My Day Award" from Monica! Monica has a lovely blog and is a talented artist with a great eye for style. Thank you Monica! I pass this award onto these bloggers whose posts never fail to make me smile: Faerie*Dust*Dreams, Fluffy Flowers, Kandeland, and my new bloggy friend DecadentDiamond.

Drawing From History

(images from The Costumer's Guide to the Movies)
We recently took our two little guys to see Enchanted at the theatre. We don't often go to the movies, so this was a special treat for the whole family. They both just adored it! My youngest now wants the soundtrack so he can dance and sing along with Giselle. So cute! As a student of art history something seemed vaguely familiar about the dress the animated Giselle was wearing, but it was a fun, happy movie and I didn't dwell too much on it. Then I saw this comparison of her dress to the Art Nouveau illustration by Alphonse Mucha and I knew what my brain had been trying to dig up! Definitely some strong design influence there.

I wouldn't mind having something that gorgeous in my closet! :)

Happy PIFers & Jane Austin

Just before Christmas I was honored to host a PIF handmade exchange (you can read the details here) and asked for volunteers to receive a handmade goody (made by me!) and then continue on this wonderful chain of giving by making things for others. (Forgive the light in these photos - it's been storming again for days and the Oregon light is ....well.....permanently grey.)

This beautiful felted clutch purse went to the mega talented Kathy at Artful Muse. We were chatting about buttons, so of course there had to be cool buttons involved!
And wouldn't a coordinating pin be nice with that clutch? So I whipped up a little felted flower pin (with matching button of course!) from the rest of the wool yarn.That second flower pin in the picture is actually a hand crocheted English rose pin going to my second happy PIFer, Annie. Her pin is the deluxe version of my flower pins and comes with a European style finished back. I've been experimenting with various ways to send pins, and as of this last pin, have finally settled on this presentation. It fits in the standard boxes, uses my new labels .. it's a winner! So....all of my crocheted flower pins will now come on pretty cards like this. All my flower pins are one-a-kind beauties straight from the studio garden. I did make two flower pins for Alison as part of her winning giveaway package, but you know me and how I am horrible at remembering to photograph things before I wrap them, so no photos of those :)

And what's this???? It's the cover of my new Oregon Public Broadcasting magazine!Masterpiece Theatre is running "The Complete Jane Austin" with new presentations of "Persuasion", "Mansfield Park", "Northanger Abbey" and "Sense and Sensibility", plus the acclaimed Kate Beckinsale "Emma" and the Colin Firth "Pride and Prejudice". Oh, yum - a Jane Austin fest! I watched the first one, "Persuasion" last night and am looking forward to the other new presentations!!

Anne Boleyn Would Be Jealous.

I started watching The Tudors over my blog break and was inspired to make a gorgeous crocheted collar with pearl accents.

But first ... I wanted to share this lovely custom silver bird's nest necklace on it's way to Natalea! I spent a good chunk of my blog break studio time weaving more nests for the secret garden portion of my shop. They are all back in stock (except for one) and I now have some with white/cream "eggs". I should have the pics of the white ones uploaded in the near future. I've been spending much of my free time trying to get my Etsy shop off the ground. Not having much luck yet, because there is SO much competition in jewelry, but I'm not disheartened yet! And here is my Tudor inspired collar! I picked a really rich red color and crocheted it with a wonderful complex lace pattern. The front is embellished with some large white pearls. I think it looks very regal! Worthy of any of Henry the VIII's queens!

Wait, one more thing :) My friend Michelle at Hold Dear is having the most awesome swap. A mermaid and seaside inspired swap featuring mermaids and all the bounty of the sea. Sign-up closes on Jan. 14th though, so hurry!

A Dose of Beauty

(Vintage Cache uploaded by Bella Seven)
It has been grey skies with drizzling rain here for weeks. Although we did have snow on Christmas day!! Just a light dusting and it melted in a few hours, but still ... I think that qualifies as a White Christmas? I've been browsing through some pretty and found this beautiful montage featured at Lola Enchanted. The perfect eye candy antidote to rainy days!

The Start of a Beautiful New Year!

It was so hard staying away from blogland for my break!! I kept straying over to the computer and then having to tell myself ...no... go back to the studio or..... go start getting out the cookie ingredients for when the kids wake up. LOL!! I missed you all terribly, but I had fantastic Christmas and New Years with my family and got spend some real quality time with my little ones.

I have so much to share! But today, lets start with some mail goodies. The sweet and lovely Gracie at Gracie Bella Buttefly held a giveaway and I won some of her fantastic cards! Look at how prettily they were wrapped! So pretty I felt bad about opening them :)And here are the beautiful notecards inside that pretty wrapping - complete with little envelopes and matching stickers! Sooo cute! She is such a talented paper artist and I can't wait to use these!! Thank you Gracie!!
I also had the incredible good fortune to win the holiday blog giveaway at ARTful Paper Dreams! I was a new reader of Jen's lovely blog and was just overjoyed to win some of her lovely creations. The level of detail and meticulous construction on her tags is amazing! So hard to use them on someone else's packages! :)
This one is long overdue being posted. I received these pretty pink earrings from Roxi a few months ago. I just started wearing them right away and forgot to take a photo ... but I saved her stunning earring card (handmade from start to finish and perfectly complimenting the earrings) and have reunited the earrings and card for this shot. They are beautiful Roxi!!


And now .. to start the new year, two gifts for you! I have eclectic tastes so these are a bit non-traditional, but maybe that will be good since they will be a little different! First, a gift of beauty. This new retelling of "Beauty and the Beast" with watercolors by Angela Barrett is worth a look for the beautiful, ethereal pictures alone. The occasional two page spreads are breathtakingly gorgeous!
And second, a gift of mystery. If you've ever seen the movie "Lost in Translation" and wondered what Bill Murray whispers to Scarlett in that final scene ... here it is revealed! Personally, I had a hard time making it out even after the tinkering, but what he says does make perfect sense. If you haven't seen the movie, it's very good and I highly recommend it.

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday with your loved ones and that 2008 is off to a great start for you!!!