Costume Jewelry and Picture Frames

It seems it is the current rage to use vintage costume jewelry for picture frame decoration.  With just a wire cutter for removing backings from earrings and broach pins, a handy hot glue gun, along with a few decorative buttons and charms and two small purchased picture frames, I made a couple of embellished beauties in just an hour.

Frame #1;  a pair of ruby slippers, a couple of breast cancer pins, a Scrabble pin from 2002, button covers, broken earrings, a few glass marbles, a couple of glass beads, leftover glass squares from a mosaic, one broach, and a rhinestone necklace resulted in this...

Frame #2:

It was fun to poke around in my jewelry boxes and look into bins of vintage costume wares in thrift stores.  It is amazing what you can find. A fun, creative and easy project can be made with minimal effort.  A picture frame can be personalized with your own little treasures that will give your frame special meaning.  Give it a try!

Previously, I wrote a blog post found HERE when I had a milagro necklace made of some of my mother's favorite memory charms.  We dug around in her mementos and found several treasures to use as charms.  Here are some picture from that post showing mother's necklace:

CASA for Children

Eighteen months ago, I became a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) for children and wrote a post about it HERE.

This past week I took on another case, and while at the CASA office I found this writing:

CASA VOLUNTEERS

We speak for a CHILD 

who wears shoes that are too small

whose nightmares are a reality

who never heard of Mickey Mouse

whose parents ran away

We are the voice of a child

who feels at fault

who lives in fear of daddy coming home

who wonders what it's like to have a friend

who only eats when food can be found

We listen to the children

who don't know what truth is

who are in constant need of a hug

who find freedom only on a swing

who believe they are the parent.

Together we work to make a difference

WE ARE COURT APPOINTED SPECIAL ADVOCATES

It was good enough to share. Please think about volunteering your efforts.
Nancy

Waste Not

Epic failure on blueberry coffeecake as the middle was still doughy after 50 minutes in the oven. Honestly, all instructions were followed correctly:

So I scooped out the middle from the loaf cake and repackaged the dough into muffins.  It worked, sorta.

But the Orange Date Muffins with recipe supplied here by the Mennonitegirls were a bit more successful:

Coffee clache at our house was fun, even though my friends did not want their pictures taken. So I didn't.

Then I bought two new side tables to refresh the living room furniture.  The wood is from India and is a very hard, dark wood called Sheesham.

Two new tables in the house, two previously used tables out of the house and to the consignment store.  My husband's philosophy on all material goods is that if one thing comes into the house, at least one item must go out.  Zen-ish.  It works for everything but my craft room.

Be patient with me, Gene, God isn't finished with me yet.

Drawing Pig Feet

Remember the Queen of the Porcines, that picture I was going to sketch and then watercolor?

Their feet were not shown in the photograph used for painting, so I had to find some pictures of pigs' feet for models. Here it is thus far:

PPF

Here are some of my models (sans hoof polishes...they all needed pedicures)

Email Picture of the Week

Have a great week!
More Wordless Wednesday can be found here

 (thanks, Maureen, for sending this)

Watercolor Tutorials Overview

Betty, this one's for you.  Over at the WoodFairy blog, Betty got me back into painting on silk. She had asked for a tutorial on watercolor techniques, so I will gladly oblige.  This may be a bit tedious, so we shall see how it goes.

Not only will there be one, but there will also be several tutorials focusing on using watercolor paints on 140 lb. watercolor paper.  I will add each lesson on the sidebar as they progress and time allows.

Tutorial Outline

• Materials needed: watercolors, at least 140 lb. watercolor paper, brushes, water, ruler, palette knives, miskit, cloth or paper rags to start.  Paint tubes of watercolors are available in hundred of colors.  They will last years and it takes just a dab of color on a palette.  When the paint dries, just add a wet brush and the lively shades reappear on the brush.  Sable brushes are best, but brush prices vary, so just be sure you have a half dozen brushes in various sizes that are dedicated to watercolors and have no oil or acrylic residue left in the hairs.

But I am getting carried away.  (an entire lesson on just materials to follow)

• 2.  Material preparation, including soaking of water, wet on wet, wet on dry, etc.  (another lesson)
• 3.  Choosing your subject  ... the less lines the better as we start off.  Perhaps you might choose a coloring book picture to replicate.
• 4.  Drawing in the subject you will be painting in pencil...pencil marks will be erased after color is applied. (another lesson on using the grid method for ease in replication of drawing in a picture if you are not painting from a still life)  And using the internet to check accuracy of completing subjects drawn ( ...i.e., porcine feet)
• 5.  Using miskit barriers (another lesson)
• 6.  Choosing your palette colors.  Look to the great artists and determine the colors they use in a painting that you are particularly drawn to.  An example below highlights colors I like with pinks, purples, yellows, whites, greens, and blues.  How many shades of just green can you count?

source (Frederick Frieseke (1874-1939)The Garden in June 1911)

 ...and then creating your own palette from the colors you have acquired (another lesson)

(the palette I made and use)

• 7.  Painting, shading, backgrounds, salt preparation for backgrounds
• 8.  Finishing techniques

There are probably more parts that will be added later.  Stay tuned!  And if you would care to view a few of my watercolors, they are displayed here.

Queen of the Italian Pigs, the Cinta Sensa

The breed of Cinta Sensa, a Tuscan pig, was most notably used for racing in prior times, but now the source of gourmet, pricey meat.

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Toscana and Chianti News says:

you can find examples of these animals in very old paintings, in the fresco “Good Government” by Ambrogio Lorenzetti for example, on display at the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, there is a farmer walking with his Senese pig held by a leash. This special kind of pig is also visible in paintings by Bartoli di Fredi ... also in a more recent painting by Giovanni Fattori. 

The Cinta Senese is the forefather of all the Tuscan pigs. It is almost savage and very resistant to bad weather, for these reasons it represented a secure food reserve for the farmers and their families. This type of swine grows very slowly (the slaughtering age is never less than 12 months) and this is one of the reasons to why farmers, in the past, abandoned this race in favour of races which grow much faster. The pigs are raised half wild feeding in the woods and on pasture hills and fields. 

They are immediately recognisable thanks to its large white “belt” around the neck on the black body, they have a short and thin bristle, a pointed nose, sloping ears and a slanting, robust back. The fragrant pork is optimal for cooking but it’s mainly used for the production of various kinds of tasty cold cuts. Classical are the “prosciutto alla spalla” (shoulder ham) and the “salami al lardo e il capocollo” (salami of lard and top neck); typical Tuscan products of the highest quality that you just can’t resist.

"Good Government” by Ambrogio Lorenzetti, 1338

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Giovanni Fattori, "Two Pigs on Pasture"

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My daughter and I were lucky enough to visit the Tuscan area together in 1997, and shopped at a specialty meat shop in San Gimignana (Town of Towers).  If you look closely, the Cinta Sensa boar heads are at the top of the picture on either side of the entry into the shop.  (Daughter Heidy is posed next to a wild hare.)

1997

We tasted some of the Tuscan boar, along with other specialty items.  I just remember the meat was spicy, and the day was cold, rainy and very dark; not surprising that the camera was not well focused.

I'll be posting some watercolors of these pigs later this week.  Here is my start to a sketch of "Queens Of Italian Pigs" that will be painted with watercolors: 

Finches

...for PPF

 (Watercolor on canvas)

My mother always called it a nest, the multi-colored mass harvested from her six daughters' brushes, and handed it to one of us after she had shaped it, as we sat in front of the fire drying our hair. She said some birds steal anything, a strand of spider's web, or horse's mane, the residue of sheep's wool in the grasses near a fold where every summer of her girlhood hundreds nested. Since then I've seen it for myself, their genius— how they transform the useless. I've seen plastics stripped and whittled into a brilliant straw, and newspapers—the dates, the years— supporting the underweavings. As tonight in our bed by the window you brush my hair to help me sleep, and clean the brush as my mother did, offering the nest to the updraft. I'd like to think it will be lifted as far as the river, and catch in some white sycamore, or drift, too light to sink, into the shaded inlets, the bank-moss, where small fish, frogs, and insects lay their eggs. Would this constitute an afterlife? The story goes that sailors, moored for weeks off islands they called paradise, stood in the early sunlight cutting their hair. And the rare birds there, nameless, almost extinct, came down around them and cleaned the decks and disappeared into the trees above the sea.  Darwin's Finches by Deborah Digges

(Close up from watercolor above 5/31/12: NAM)

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Geese Feet

Could be a goose:

Turn up your speakers and listen to ‘Flock of geese’ on Audioboo.

...and these are definitely the feet of a goose.  I am enchanted with the picture and the verse that Debra has associated with the feet of Titus, her goose, over at her Sparrowgrass blog:

"It is tolerably safe to say that those who wear loose, easy-fitting shoes and boots will never be troubled with corns. Some people are more liable to corns than others, and some will persist in the use of tightly-fitting shoes in spite of corns." ~Our Deportment~Or-The Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society, 1880

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“How do geese know when to fly to the sun? Who tells them the seasons? How do we, humans know when it is time to move on? As with the migrant birds, so surely with us, there is a voice within if only we would listen to it, that tells us certainly when to go forth into the unknown.”

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Frog's a Jumpin'

...on silk

Dimensions finished: 16" x 20" under glass; mat size opening: 10.5" x 13.5"

I finally completed a frog painted on  8 mm silk with colors that blended correctly.  It was set with steam for three hours on top of the stove, then ironed and matted and placed in a purchased frame under glass.

Close up of Mr. Frog who is about 11" in length

This was one I painted a few weeks ago on thinner silk, using basically the same line drawing, but with less dye, and transparent gutta, making a softer effect:

Minnemie first painted a frog on lily pads in watercolors.  She was kind enough to let me take inspiration from her art.  I loved the way she made the colors flow, and thought it would make up well in silk. (please do make a visit to her blog as she shows her wonderful watercolors here on her blog).  Minnemie also quotes nice verse along with her painting.  You will enjoy her musings.

A Nice Pair of Socks and a Watercolor

...are finished.  Hermione's Everyday Socks were knit from a free pattern available here on Ravelry.  It is the second pair I've knit from that same pattern.

The yarn was purchased almost two years ago at The Rummer Tavern in Cardiff, Wales at a meet up with independent yarn dyers.  Thanks, "Jellybean," for this nice sock yarn you dyed in autumn colors.

The heel was knit in a different yarn just for the grins of it.  It took about two weeks to knit this pair.  And that yarn is exactly the colors in my old Keen Sandals...

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Then I saw a little bird that I thought would look cute hanging on a clothes line with my knitted socks, so I drew it and painted it in those Derwent Inktense pencils.  Here it is:

(Next time I'll use watercolor paper; this was painted on a canvas board...not such a good idea, but fun.)