Great T-Shirt

I found this terrific t-shirt at Heather Bullard's Present Past Collection. It is what I asked for for my mother's day gift from hubby.

Shrink plastic and pearls

Worked on these last night. These are shrink plastic disks with inexpensive glass pearls.

more tea inspired jewelry - leaves

tea field pendant

Well here is the second piece in what I plan to create as a series of "tea field" jewelry. I edged this pendant with silver leaf - but actually think these particular pieces of shrink plastic look better plain. Also, with tweezers I strung each little seed bead onto wire to create the necklace. I have never worked with many seed beads before. Well, now that I have I appreciate the labor involved!

As I have mentioned before, we are renovating our house right now. But as soon as we are back in our real house and I have a studio, I will open an etsy shop. That will probably happen this fall. So please stay tuned! I promise to have lots of tea-themed items in my etsy shop.

tea field earrings

Last summer I visited the Charleston Tea Plantation in Charleston, SC. While there, I took photos of the fields of tea plants. Well, it just recently ocurred to me that I could incorporate those images into jewelry by using printable shrink plastic. This is one thing that I came up with: a set of tea leaf earrings. The green discs picture tea plants from the fields. The silver leaves seem reminiscent of tea leaves, so the whole seems to go together to me.

Inspiration

This image of a Cabinet of Curiosities was my main inspiration for the piece I created in the Michael deMeng workshop. I really like to see these two images side by side.

Michael deMeng Workshop in Saluda, NC

My photos got all mixed up when I uploaded them, but I will go through and add notes.

Here, first is one of my classmates with her morpheus box.


Here is my Morpheus Box. I learned alot in the workshop and enjoyed it, but was not happy with what I produced. At the end of the workshop I realized that it is hard for me to work quickly and with a time constraint such as that which one faces in a workshop situation.

Here are more of my classmates with their Morpheus Boxes.




Here is Michael deMeng critiquing our work. He was very generous and positive with his comments.

Here is another of my classmates with her Morpheus Box.

Here is me in front of Random Arts, the art supply store that sponsored this workshop.

Here is Michael deMeng teaching us about his color washes.

Great T-Shirt

Just found a great line of T-shirts at Target. The tag reads "L.O.L. Vintage." I tried to find something about this by googling it, but did not find much. Let me know if you learn who makes these. They had all sorts of different images and text. I thought this was was particularly well done.

Before and After

These are more potential elements for the Morpheus box workshop with Michael deMeng. I found the clear plastic swans at the dollar store - six for a dollar! Here you see I have spray painted two of them gold and antiqued them lightly with a grey paint. The interior of each swans read "made in China" so I filled them with a layer of blue seed beads and covered that with Diamond Glaze. I am thinking that when it dries and the Diamond Glaze is clear, it will look like a small puddle of water in the interior of each swan basin.

Supplies for Michael deMeng Workshop

I have been thrifting lately - and collecting supplies for the Morpheus Box workshop. I just love all of these treasures I have found. The cost for the items varied from 10 cents to 3 dollars. Can't beat that!

The Best Purse

Just found the greatest line of purses at The Old North State Clothing Company here in Asheville. They are the OlovesM line of purses. Here is a description of the purses from the producer's website:

"The OlovesM.com bags are a zero waste creation, made from un-used material that companies were going to throw away. "

I just love the concept. And the purses are cute and fun as well! Frivolitea loves OlovesM!

added note: I forgot to mention that the purse pictured is made from remnants of the material used to make yoga mats. How cool is that?

Morpheus Box Workshop with Michael DeMeng

I have just given myself a fabulous Mother's Day present! I have signed up for Michael DeMeng's Morpheus Box workshop that will be held on Saturday, May 10 at Random Arts in Saluda, North Carolina. Saluda is only 45 minutes from my home here in Asheville, so I have been wanting to take workshops there for quite a while. Well, now I will!

To start off the morpheus box workshop, we will be given an unfinished wooden box with a four-sided wooden insert that spins around, revealing each of the four sides in turn. We will create an artwork with collage and assemblage using that box as the base.

I have been thinking about what theme I would like to work on in this piece, and I have decided that I will use the Cabinet of Curiosities as my theme. It seems like a fitting and interesting theme to use for a box-shaped work of art.

Here are some images picturing actual Cabinet of Curiosities of maybe - the 16th century??? Something like that.

Beatiful Polymer Clay Beads

Follow this link over to Humblebeads Blog. Heather Powers produces beautiful work! I would post a picture here, but I don't want to steal a photo from her site. So just go on over there for a visit.

Currently Reading

This is a wonderful collection of short stories - full of the flavor of western north carolina and the foothills of south carolina. Back a few weeks ago my husband, children, and I took some day trips around this area. The landscape reminded me of how much I liked Ron Rash's first two novels. So after those trips, I searched out this book, Chemistry and Other Stories, and his third novel - The World Made Straight - at our local public library. Can't wait to delve into that novel.

Turtle Shell Earrings versions 2 and 3

Here are two more versions of the turtle shell earrings. These turned out better than the first version pictured below. For these earrings, I first painted the shrink plastic with green lumiere paint. After that dried I stamped one pair with black staz-on ink and the other with opaque white staz-on ink. You can't see it too well in this picture, but the green paint glitters a little bit.