just jewelry

I had a bunch of jewelry published in this magazine, (this is the 2nd edition of it, I had some in the first issue also, you can see more about that on the Fancifuls facebook page). We (Fancifuls) advertise in it, and my ad rep asked me if I could make some things because they needed to fill some pages, and we thought if I had some projects in there we might get some business from it.

I don't know how much new business we got from it, but it is kind of cool to see something I made in a magazine on the stand in the store!! They had it at Joannes last time we were in there. The flagged pages are the ones my pieces are on.

 Here are a few pages of the magazine. We emailed the pictures to them and they edited them for the articles. Each piece featured has the items I used and the instructions on how to make it.

this is our ad

Here is the jewelry as I photographed it.

I made these 3 pieces for a young woman, Amy, that had her leg amputated in the early spring of this year. I found out about her from my mom who found out about her from the 'Tole Painters Unite' Facebook page. Amy's aunt was asking people to send things for a courage tree for her before the surgery. I had sent a few paper things, but wanted to make her something she could wear to show her strength. She sent me a nice note and said she loved it.

This is actually the same pair of earrings, but I added the cross and another bead before I sent them to Amy.

Mom really liked these, so I made her a pair for her birthday.

No, I did not get paid for these submissions. Yes, we had to pay for the ad. I did get a free magazine though!

I sent the rest of the jewelry to The Left Bank to sell on consignment. I don't know if any of it sold, I haven't gotten a check for my May sales yet.

morning stroll

We got up early today, well, early for us since it was garbage day and it has to be out by 7:30 to get picked up. It was 70 degrees out already, so we sat on the porch relaxing after breakfast, and Vince says "I think you have another peony blooming out there" meaning across the creek. I couldn't see it from where I was sitting, so I decided to walk over there and check it out. I grabbed the camera because you never know what you are going to see or find. When I got over there, I realized it was the rhododendron! It has never bloomed in the 10 years it has been there because the deer usually eat it. The plant itself looked pretty bad due to the hard winter and the frost we just had, but the blossom it has is beautiful. After I took the pictures of that, I just stood there and looked around. There were so many things that caught my eye, I just kept taking pictures.

This was my morning stroll, May 27th. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

red twig dogwood. You can see a spider web on the the lower left hand side!

indian paintbrush

fancy petunia that I put in a flower box

this little spider is on an iris petal

buttercup

Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore, riding through the night; give me all your lupines! (If you are a Monty Python fan, you'll get this). I don't think I even knew what a lupine was when I first saw that sketch! Now they are one of my favorite flowers. They were one of the first flowers I grew from seed when I first got married and had a new house and flowerbeds to fill. I transplanted a bunch of them when we moved and they have been re-seeding themselves all over the place ever since!

When I got back over to the porch, Vince laughingly said "You should take a picture of a dandelion" and I said "I did!"
I've always loved dandelions, even when I was a kid. They are the first flowers we pick for our moms when we are little-I'm still disappointed that you can't pick them and put them in a vase!!  You can play a game with your friends to see who can flick the head off with their thumb the farthest. They are so bright and cheerful, and you can make a wish with them. They are one of the first flowers to emerge after winter- that should make anyone happy! The bunnies love to munch on them, biting them off at the bottom and chomping their way up the stem and finishing their snack with the flower. The finches eat the seeds, and the flying fluffy parachutes are like little fairies floating on the breeze. When we drive by a field that is a solid yellow mass of dandelions I can't help but wonder how anyone can hate them. And I kind of admire the way they seem to avoid the lawn mower blades and pop back up. I don't make dandelion salads or tea or wine, but it is great that they can be used that way. To me, they are beautiful. Well.... until there is one growing right in the middle of one of my perennials or the veggie garden!

duck, duck, gooses

 

We occasionally get duck visitors on our pond. Well, they may come more often than we know about since we aren't able to watch the pond all the time! We recently had a pair of wood ducks and a female merganser. I was lucky to have been on the porch when they landed on the pond, and had my camera handy!

He was so photogenic, I think I took 30 pictures of just him!

Female merganser. We had one quite a few years ago that must have been nesting nearby because she brought her ducklings up for a swim. Maybe this one will too!

She's diving for food...

I don't know if that is a minnow or salamander, there are plenty of both!

She was diving for quite a while. Then she just swam around for awhile.

The Canada geese that were nesting on the island left, leaving the unhatched eggs. I think 2 of the 3 that were here were female and they kept chasing each other off the island, so I don't really know which one had laid the eggs. So we aren't going to have any goslings, darnit! But we are still getting a few geese every so often, anywhere from 2 to 6 at a time. Sometimes they are here for a few minutes, sometimes they hang around all day!

Coming in for a landing!

This is the most we've ever had at once. They chased each other around on the pond for a while, then calmed down.

When I took this picture, I thought "Really, how many more pictures of geese do I need?" I guess one more!