Happy Turkey Day!

This holiday is a day to give thanks! I have so much to be thankful for a wonderful family and loving family. A good job when so many do not have a job. the luxury to have a space to play and be crafty and lots of craft friends to share with!

Have a wonderful day and enjoy the turkey.

May the beautiful light of inspiration flood all of your tomorrows

This is a portion of a letter sent to me by my Aunt Louanne, she has always been a creative inspiration in my life and a true artist in her own right!

Deonna

"Only a block of unencumbered freedom will get the job done. Be it gardening, dress designing, clock building, writing poetry, learning to play the piano or training for a marathon, one needs uninterrupted time to allow the spirit of creativity to settle into the heart and soul.

Your head must be on straight so that you and only you is expressed throughout your endeavor. An old book that artists have come to love, titled “No More Second Hand Art” is all about allowing your originality to show so that the project does not appear to be copied. It is only when your original spirit shows through that there is a spark within the work, an aliveness that is noticeable.

To feel creative, one must flex ones creative muscle every day and not surprisingly every one of us do just that. But, what separates the creative ones from those who say, “I don’t have a creative bone in my body”, is awareness. Being conscious of your Source and the gifts you receive and then turn around and use them to create, is a fabulous way of life, is very rewarding and is truly fulfilling."

Santa's stocking

I have been on a Christmas ornament kick lately!!

Just a couple of picks of a few I have made. I found

These cute chip board stockings and decided to try

out a new product, Stampedous shaved Ice. I just love it!

Ink the edges, front and back of stocking in red

Emboss top with white embossing powder, front and back

Brush on a good glitter glue and sprinkle on bottom of the stocking

When bottom is dry brush glue over white embossed area and sprinkle with xxx, front & back

Use stickles to add a date (I just put the date but a name would work as well)

When all is dry add ribbon and hang on your tree

Button ornaments

Some one (shout out to Pam, I think) reminded me about old Christmas ornaments we used to make using pins and sequins and it made me think! I should try to use up some buttons I had and yellow head pins. I think they will make a cute addition to my tree.

I made a hanger with ribbon

Started at the ribbon with buttons to cover the end of the ribbon

Worked my way around with different buttons

Filled in the white spots with stickles

Hung to dry, and now just waiting to put up my Christmas tree

Winter Roasted veggie soup

Boy oh boy, today is a good day for soup! I made a roasted veggie soup and it was yummy and very easy to make. My recipe is as follows:

2 pounds of any mixture of veggies I used

1 white potato

1 sweet potato

1 large onion

1 small bunch of asparagus

1 parsnip

6 cloves of garlic peeled

2 large carrots

1 rutabaga

Cut all veggies into small chunks about the same size, toss in olive oil, salt and pepper and place on lipped baking sheets.

Roast in a 400-degree oven about 45 minutes or until golden brown and toasted.

In the meantime bring 2 cups chicken broth & 1 cup water to simmer. When veggies are done put half in the pot with the broth and simmer for 30 to 40 minutes or until they are very tender. Either place in blender or use a stick blender in the pot.

Return mixture to the pot and turn to low place remaining half of veggies back into the pot a stir to reheat add ½ to 1 cup half & half until you get the consistency you like. Salt and pepper to taste and enjoy with a nice hunk of crusty bread and just wait for you insides to get all warm and toasty!

I have been a busy girl. I have completed many new pieces to add to my repertoire.

I had a dry spell because of all my travels during the last several months but am back into the swing of things. One of my posts was about passion in what you do and making jewelry is one of my passions!

I have a fun pink and black cha-cha bracelet with matching earrings, a pair of yellow and silver dangles and some fun feather earrings.

I made these great candles for my mantle the other day. I actually found the fishbowls in goodwill (I find the best junk for my creating in goodwill) and cleaned them up, added some wine corks, smaller glass inside to hold the corks in place and also gives a place to put a tea light!

I liked the look so much I purchased a very large fish bowl and will try to put it together next week, I’ll post a pick when I am done!

first try at Painting

I am on the cusp of a half a century old and sometimes I don't feel like I have even hit my twenties.

I love to create things that are beautiful, fun, quirky or just plain silly. It could be anything from a piece of art to hang over my fireplace to a lovely pair of sparkly jewels to hang on my ears. It really doesn’t matter as long as I am having fun while I am creating!

Just to prove it this painting above my fireplace I painted because I could not find anything I liked.

Well I just delivered my tags for the Christmas tag swap I’m in with several other craft ladies from LSH. I had to make 15 tags and 3 different designs. I like how they turned out but they were more work than I expected.

I made my own custom paper on my printer

Cut out my tags on my die cut machine with a big die

Inked my tags

Embellished, cut, stamped, embossed, frosted, bejeweled and glued!!

Added a touch of ribbon and delivered

Just waiting for the delivery of the tags from the other participants

Fall wire wrapped bracelet

I have been teaching a few jewelry classes and I have tried to come up with some new ideas for every class. My newest idea is a festival of fall colors wire wrapped bracelet. This is the sample bracelet I made for the class. We should have lots of fun making the bracelet and just in time for all the woolly warm sweaters.

Creativity

While searching different sites to learn how to start a blog the main thing I came away with is that all you need to do is blog about something you are passionate about. Well I will make my first posts about just that! Creativity.

Creating has been something I have always LOVED.

My first creative endeavor was sewing old buttons on a scrap of fabric. I was about 4 and my Grandma would have them all ready when I came to spend the night and they would miraculously be ready again to sew all over the next week end. That was the start of my creativity and now 40 plus years later I manage to do a lot more than sew buttons on a scrap of fabric!

Create!

I love to play and these are some of my favorite things:

I love creating beautiful scrapbook pages

wonderful cards to send to those I love

beautiful jewelery creations of all sorts

Christmas crafts of all kinds

Since this is my first post (and I hope one of many) I will just add a few of my most recent

items I have made.

Happy creating!

Deonna