Attendees at the Elko (in)RL meetup April 28, 2012

The (in)Real Life meetup I hosted at my home on Saturday, April 28, had 6 participants. We made new friends, enjoyed great food and conversations, and watched the inspirational webcasts provided by those that manage the (in)Courage website/blog. We had such a terrific time, we’ve decided to meet again in a month for dinner at a local restaurant.

If you’re looking for uplifting and encouraging inspiration and support, I highly recommend the (in)Courage website/blog. It has a large worldwide following and is affiliated with DaySpring, the Christian subsidiary of Hallmark. You can sign up to receive the blog posts in your email inbox on a weekly or per-post basis. I find that the posts by a variety of authors provide a welcome balance to the discouraging national and world news that seems to bombard me daily. Maybe you will, too!

Example of the miniature encaustic art I'll be creating at Mishmash & Muddle

I have been invited to demonstrate my encaustic (melted wax) painting from 3-6 p.m. Saturday, May 12, at Mishmash & Muddle, 452 Idaho St., as a participant in the Elko (NV) Downtown Business Association’s Art Walk. I’ll be using my encaustic hot plate, iron, and other hot wax tools to make miniature works of art on metallic paper. I will then offer them for sale for a small fee to cover my material costs.

As part of this fundraising event involving several artists and downtown businesses, there will be a silent auction that day at the Duncan Little Creek Gallery, 516 Commercial St. I’ll be donating an encaustic piece for that auction, as well.

If you’re in this area, I hope you will bid on my work at the silent auction and come watch me at play with my wax. Will I see you this Saturday?

10 new pillboxes added to my website

Today I added 10 new stained glass multi-dose pillboxes to my website. There were 11 in this batch, but I sold the one below to a friend before I could post it on my website.

Blue Brooch Pillbox--Sold!

I also created this custom large septagon pillbox for a New Jersey customer last week. I gave her over 40 possible embellishment arrangements to choose from, and this is the great one she picked. I do enjoy playing with all the embellishment possibilities and taking pictures of them before everything gets glued together.

Custom pillbox for a recent customer

It’s especially cool the way the little red butterfly I embedded in the well on the bottom side of the pillbox shows through the glass when you hold it up to the light. The “phantom butterfly” fits right into the design. Don’t you love it?

The phantom fourth butterfly

Please keep me in mind for your custom pillbox needs. I can put one together for you in just a few days. They make great gifts, too!

Jewelry display placed at the Chamber.

On March 8, I placed in the Elko, Nevada, Chamber of Commerce Gift Shop seven new porcelain and real turquoise necklaces and 24 pair of earrings that were previously on my website. To achieve this, I purchased a revolving jewelry display rack and had hang tags custom made with my 4-color logo on them for my earrings and other jewelry.

The whole display rack looks very professional, and I’m excited to see how well my jewelry sells via this outlet. I have had my artwork prints, note cards, sage brush lapel pins, and magnets for sale there for several years, as I am a Chamber member. I also have a nifty business web page on the Chamber’s website that I encourage you to check out.

I recently fell in love with some glazed porcelain horse head beads, so I purchased several plus a variety of matching components and real turquoise beads so I could create several necklaces in this theme. I have not run out of these materials yet, so watch for more necklaces to be added to this collection.

Porcelain and turquoise necklaces

I also took to the Chamber almost all my website’s earrings that had gold-plated ear wires. The earrings placed at the Chamber are no longer available on my website, so I definitely want to make more earrings soon to replenish my website’s earring collection.

Please leave a comment to let me know how you like my new jewelry display and this new collection of heart and horsey necklaces. I hope you also will stop by the Chamber gift shop and/or my website to take a closer look!

So many women have connected online via (in)courage that it was suggested that they be given an opportunity to meet at an annual conference. The inspired people at (in)courage decided that instead of hosting an annual conference in a single location, they would encourage women to gather locally at (in)Courage-sponsored  (in) Real Life ((in)RL) events–think mini beach house parties–on April 28, 2012. At “the beach house,” these women will share thoughts and ideas, form friendships, share Jesus, and view together webcasts provided by (in)courage. The whole thing is managed online using MeetUp.com, where participants may RSVP and register to attend their local (in)RL gathering. Already there are (in)RL meetups scheduled on that date in over 225 cities.

(in)courage meetups are real life get togethers organized by the (in)courage blog community to connect women beyond the blog post. Details are here: http://inrl.us

I’ve bravely decided to host the first (In)RL gathering in the Elko, Spring Creek, Lamoille, NV, area at 1 p.m. Sat. April 28, 2012. When I know how many women plan to attend, I’ll decide on the exact location and notify the participants. Please contact me if you are interested in helping me host/organize this event.

Goals: Women gathered to watch live webcasts of (in)courage contributors and community, connect with one another, share Jesus, and discover new friendships right around the corner!

You may register for the event here http://inrl.eventbrite.com. There also will be a 90-minute preparatory webcast available to registrants on Friday evening, April 27, via the internet. The registration fee is $11.54, and includes an (in)RL t-shirt as well as a Simply Marvelous card pack. Sounds like a sweet deal to me!

Wherever you live, I hope you will familiarize yourself with (in)courage and attend an (in)RL event near you on April 28. There is so much dark and distressing news these days, we could all use some uplifting support and maybe make some new Christian women friends! I look forward to reading your thoughts on this project.

I’ve been on a beading spree lately, creating 7 new necklaces and 5 new pair of earrings. These have all been posted for sale on my website, though I’m loathe to part with some of them, they are so lovely.

Two of the necklaces I made using Wonderstone (Rhyolite) that I found in the Elko, NV, area. Instead of polishing the stone faces that feature Wonderstone’s concentric circles, which requires special equipment, I chose to coat them with clear resin. This gives the stones’ focal points a shiny surface that enhances the design, yet allows it to contrast with the stone’s natural surfaces.

Wonderstone Slab Necklace

I also created my first three-strand necklace, featuring antiqued chain segments and iridescent butterflies.

Triple Butterfly Necklace

I’ve also experimented with new components in my newly created earrings.  These include using transparent glass macaroni noodles, glass-fringed filigreed heart components, and beaded baubles. Two of the new sets of earrings match the new necklaces I made.

Aqua Fringed Heart Earrings

You can see all these new creations in the Jewelry Gallery on my website where they are available for purchase. If you’re a local customer, I’ll be happy to reimburse you for my website’s shipping charges if you arrange for pickup of your purchases at my studio in Lamoille, NV, by contacting me.

I’d be pleased if you’d post a comment as to how you like these new pieces and/or what types of jewelry you’d like me to make more of.

I recently created a batch of seven new pillboxes, pictured above. Several have dichroic glass and/or UTEEite embellishments. These pillboxes were listed today on my website for purchase.

A customer recently ordered five custom 1-dose pillboxes for use as solid perfume containers. I prepared nine 1-dose boxes, unglued, for her to choose from, as shown in the picture below.

She chose the brown, purple, red, light blue, and yellow boxes. I reconfigured the remaining boxes (except for the dark blue one) with different embellishments and posted them on my website as pictured in the first picture in this post.

This is the typical way I prepare custom pillbox orders, providing a variety of designs for the customer to choose from before gluing things together. Please keep me in mind for custom pillboxes, as these can be completed in just a few days.

If you see someone using an ugly multi-day pillbox, take a look at their decor and color preferences. Then order them a same size and configuration readymade pillbox or custom pillbox from my website and give it to them as a gift so they will enjoy seeing their pillbox and can thus keep it handy on their counter top.

Let me know what you think of my new creations!

Refracting strong sunlight, this is one of three similar pairs of UTEEite earrings available.

I was convinced I could somehow form molten UTEE (Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel) into transparent teal waves inside 1.5″ hoop earrings. Four hours later, I had produced three sets of similar earrings, two for pierced ears, and one with adjustable clip-on attachments. The trial-and-error process wasn’t easy, but I’m delighted with the results.

At first, I thought I could just dip the hoops into molten UTEE in my Melting Pot. No such luck. It only coated the wire. When I tried letting that cool and building up layers of UTEEite by redipping, I ended up with a log-shaped lump of UTEEite on the bottom of the hoop. No wave! I remelted that effort and started over.

I next poured molten UTEEite into the hoops as they were laying flat on a teflon heatproof mat. Excess UTEEite was cut from the outside of the hoop with a scissors. If the “wave” did not look like a wave, its shape was adjusted with the paddle attachment on my hot wax stylist tool. Some waves had to be remelted and reshaped using a hot air gun.

The UTEEite gradually changed color during the 4-hour heating process. Therefore, each pair of earrings is a slightly different color blue, as I worked on one pair at a time.

As you can see in the picture above, the sunlight shining through these earrings produces some lovely patterns, much like the patterns created when sunlight shines through water. Just as no two waves are alike, don’t expect any of these hand created treasures to be identical! 

These would make terrific holiday gifts, so be quick to snap them up on my website. While you’re there, check out my other creations with gift giving in mind. Don’t forget to include yourself on that gift list! ;o}

Would you like me to create more hoop earrings similar to these, perhaps in different colors? If so, what color(s) would you prefer I try next?

This herd is available as encaustic prints and notecards.

The first of my encaustic stencilled herd creations is now available for sale on my website in large/small print and notecard formats. (The copyright notice in the picture above does not appear on the finished products.) This herd of three different horses charges at you wearing beautiful American Southwest colors of teal, green, brown, orange, and gold.

Creating this work required the following steps.

• One horse was drawn onto white mat board and simplified into a stencil format.
• The stencil design was cut out of the mat board with an Exacto knife.
• The resulting stencil was photographed with a black background to create a black horse image on a white background.
• The image was transferred to my computer where it was converted into a solid white background with a transarent horse, just like the physical stencil.
• A colorful encaustic pattern was created on a large sheet of encaustic card stock using my large hot plate, hot air tool, and various encaustic waxes.
• The pattern was then photographed and transferred to my computer.
• The digital pattern was placed behind the digital horse stencil on my computer.
• The white background was made transparent, so only the encaustic pattern appeared where the horse’s body was.
• This process was repeated using two additional drawings of horses in different poses.
• The three resultant digital patterned horses were combined in one document, enlarging/reducing and flipping them horizontally as necessary to create my final herd in this Southwest design.

Each horse was lovingly rendered as a separate unit, so the patterns composing each horse’s body would decrease logically in size as the horses were positioned farther away in the herd.

As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, I’ve already created a total of five horse stencils. I have also created several different encaustic patterns to place behind these stencils.  My next task will be to photograph and substitute these new backgrounds behind the five digital horse stencils I’ve created, then combine them on my computer into more herds and/or single horses. I’m greatly looking forward to this process, which should proceed more quickly, now that I’ve learned the most efficient ways to manipulate the images on my computer.

Due to the elaborate process required to create these herds, they can only be created as open edition prints, rather than as encaustic originals. I’m excited by simplicity of the designs and the rich colors the encaustics create in these prints. I hope you will be, too! What do you think of my first herd?

Green Bon Bon Pillbox

These include a new “triple set” of large 7-day strip pillboxes that may be used individually for multiple days or as a set for morning, noon, and evening doses. They each have glittery transparent aqua acrylic nuggets on their matching swirled green stained glass tops. I’m excited about this “set” idea, so I may be making more sets in the future. What do you think of the matching pillbox set concept?

Do keep my pillboxes (and other creations) in mind for Christmas gifts. If you don’t see what you need on my website, order a custom pillbox. I can make one in a few days that will be perfect for your giftee. These also make terrific earring/jewelry cases for travel or boudoir. Don’t forget: I make pillboxes for men, too!