The last time I was this fired up about the Tigers it was at Tiger Stadium not Comerica Park. I was graduating from high school - it was the '60's. My father held business boxes because of the company he worked for - Budd Wheel (hubs and drums). I had spent part of the previous year before the new school year sitting at the stadium with him watching games. I knew all of these names very well:
Mckey Lolich (pitcher) and Bill Freehan (catcher) - along with Jim Northrup, Mickey Stanley, Al Kaline, and my favorite Willie Horton.
I feel the fever coming - - - -Let it be SO. GO TIGERS GO!
I'm in a holiday mood and just running with it. I still believe in the spirit of Santa and all of the fun and happiness that spreads at this time of the year. These are some of the ceramic pieces I've gotten painted and that are listed on Etsy. Whoo Hoo - back in the saddle again.
The second cataract is fixed and currently I can't see worth a darn but at least I know things are coming along. While I recovered from the knee and the other eye this is what I've been doing....slowly but surely. Here's my plate of new bisque to be painted, glazed, and listed. Lots of new things coming up. I'd have some glass too but I was busy on a special order for Glitterbug and have sent her about 20 earring sets over the past two weeks. You'd of thought I could get a few photos in during that - but no - duh - lost my photo rhythm somewhere.
I did a bunch of holiday stamping and scraffito on the clay.
If you are in need of a focal bead I think I'm going to have quite a few.
Everyone have a wonderful week and enjoy the fall weather - I know I am.
I love making eye beads. They are such a great talisman. Quite a while ago I sold an entire orphan set of beads I had - mostly extras from the focus group beading for Jeri Warhaftig's book. This great person snatched them up and promised when she made some jewelry she'd let me. Wow, she did and here is the incredible result of her work.
The artist is Amy Semenchek of Chek Designs - Amy has a Etsy snipet for her piece and I asked her if she would mind if I passed along the information - here is what she said:
"Can't you see? It's all perspective!" - Mixed media necklace. Etched and enameled copper tube accented with crystals and amazing lamp work "eye" bead create a fun "perspective" on life! It jingles, too! $52.
Look at the great etched eye on the copper tubing - it's just right up my style with the talisman intent. Nice job Amy - it's great to know what my beads are used for and I love the eye candy a great piece of jewelry provides. Thank you for sharing.
I've always loved CG's graphite paddles. I have several of them and use them frequently to make nice round beads and check the sizes as I go. Mallory Hoffman recently posted about a new one she purchased and it looked just awesome - just like a calf following the Mommy cow I just had to have one. Sometimes a simple bead with a great surface texture (this is a ribbed bicone) is just the right compliment to what you are creating. If you haven't used them go and check them out at CG Beadrollers - they're wonderful tools.
The new one I ordered is so long (it has all of these graduated sizes) I couldn't get it all in the photo I was taking so I've imported a picture from the site so you can see - LOL. When I make some new beads with it I'll post them.
I couldn't help it...I've been working on the torch and on some clay. With all the new parts they just put in me I'm feeling a little like Frankenstein. I am also temporarily as clumsy and with one eye having cataract surgery and the other one waiting until September 27th my spacial vision is for crap. My glasses are useless and it will be until mid- October before they can fit me with a new pair. Mostly I'm just laughing this off but I know there are times I have this contorted look on my face because people look at me like I've been in a car accident or something. I occasionally have drop foot and feel like I'm dragging it Quasimodo style through the grocery store. I must be a sight...what are ya' gonna do? I should put a little orange or something in my hair for Halloween and then watch them stare at the Walmart. I had the best fun one year when I did hot pink...
Not to worry - it will all heal in good time if I don't hurt the physical therapist. I'm starting to get a little "sassy" with him. Once I even went so far as to tell him, "Nope, not doing that one - let's move on." I gave him the old delinquency worker look and we moved on and added a different one. Turd.
Frankie here will go on Etsy probably on Wednesday. I am way to lazy for photography - hence the awful hands that need hand cream. Getting older is just plain shitty. I'm smarter but the parts department at the hospital is going to run dry if this keeps up.
Love you all....hanging in there. I'm surprised Frankie turn out - I squinted when I made him and upped the lenses on my optivisor. LOL
I’ve been working on new clay pieces every day here after PT.My friend, Sharon Berkan-Dent(Mystic Swan) was recently featured in the latest edition of Lapidary Journal’s Jewelry Artist.Sharon is a fantasy artist who works in cast metal – primarily silver and gold.Her world is filled with Fae and magical creatures.As plain Jane as I am Sharon is the opposite and I have never seen her without a great piece of jewelry, unless of course we were at an art show and sharing a room after a very long day.
This is the newest Dragon (in wax) and it's ready to be cast. The stone will come out first and then the casting will be done before the stone is set into its proper position.
Not everyone is into fantasy art but I don’t know of a little girl of our age who wasn’t impressed by Tinkerbell, Fairy Godmothers, or the Evil Witch.These days it’s more dragons and Game of Thrones but whatever your flight of fancy her jewelry is fun and I love wearing the pieces of hers that I own.They take me back, they make me feel whimsical, and at times I’ve even worn my dragon to a meeting for spiritual protection.Everyone can enjoy the little girl in themselves and the desire to have a Faerie Godmother or a Dragon to curl up on for protection.
Allium Faerie
I’ve only shown a very few of Sharon’s pieces here but have included a link to her site.I wish you could all see the process by which she works her wax for casting.It’s simply amazing how minute and meticulous she is.Every scale is done in detail and put on one at a time.I know she has a Facebook fan page where you can see her works in progress – I’m sure a lucky duck that I get to see them close up and talk them over with her.If you stop by her Etsy, Blog, or web page tell her Hello – she is so nice and will enjoy hearing what you think of her work.Maybe even tell her what you’d like to see next – you never know when it might turn up.
I could live in a perpetual state of Spring and Fall....skip the rest. Those are my seasons. Love them! I had a special order for a long time friend and customer - Cherie Smith of Glitterbug Originals and this is one of my "outakes" from that order. Cherie loves to challenge me with her ideas. Some of them (LOL) would take a microscope and thread thick stringers to accomplish. She's not a lampworker so she doesn't always get what is doable in that flame. It doesn't matter though because she is always flexible and understanding. This time she listed several things she'd like to have created and I did my best. I should have taken photos but there wasn't time.
Often, if it's a new thing for me to make, I have to do a mock up first. It lets me know which layer of the design goes on first and what challenges in the process need to be altered. Some times I will work in the actual size (Cherie likes earrings) or I will go for a larger piece I can sell on my site and then downsize after the process and design is worked out.
This time I ended up with a cute witches shoe in a larger size to list on Etsy. I think it would be a cute necklace. I happened to have this rubber stamp that says "I have my eye on you". Don't you think it would make a cutie of a necklace? Etsy seems to be having its issues today so I'll probably get it listed tomorrow. I wonder what else I should be making for the Fall season - ideas?
I work in small glass beads but have always been fascinated by cast glass. Twice I have taken classes with Loren Stump. It is inevitable we will make a paperweight near the end of that class, They turn out very well and it's great to try something new. It's definitely not my thing - paperweights, that is -but a class with Loren Stump is an event. I learned things I use even now, fifteen plus years later. If I could afford it I'd take a third one.
"The Lightness of Being" by Howard Ben Tre'
What I always find remarkable about the glass artists who work sculpture size is the planning it must take to pull that off. To think that some of the pieces they make must cool in a kiln for several months - - - well, that is just mind blowing. It would kill me to wait that long to see how my piece turned out. I'm more of an instantaneous gratification kind of person with glass. I don't even want to put my beads in the kiln to cool. I want to see the color and if I got the composition correct. So, my overnight cool keeps me on pins and needles.
In the Dennos Museum they had one exhibit hall dedicated to an installation by Howard Ben Tre'. It was beautiful. The tall sculptures looked like trees, sundials, people standing tall in the wind. Spectacular pieces!!! DH and I sat in the gallery for awhile admiring them and resting my cranky left knee while we contemplated which one would look good in our yard. Then I had to laugh - uh, they are impervious to weather but what about dog urine? Okay, skip the dreaming about a sculpture garden.
Finally I'm moving around - it's plenty awkward and I feel like a baby at times, with the same wobble, but it's all upward from here. YES!
Yesterday the opthomologist checked out the eye the cataract came out of and guess what - I am street legal to drive without glasses. Look out world! Since I grew up near Detroit and my father worked there I can drive with the best of the "ditch" drivers. For those who don't know - a lot of Detroit's expressways were dug into the landscape rather than laid on top. So one of the main thoroughfares into the area from where I lived was lovingly known as the ditch. Aside from being cut into the landscape it had an early design flaw that was later repaired - it flooded - hense the ditch to those of us who remember or had parents who passed down its moniker. I was lucky enough never to have witnessed an accident on that thing but imagine all kinds of crazy drivers doing about 80 in three lanes with cement walls on the sides averaging 8 -12 feet tall. Talk about a training ground. Another unique feature was the fact that many entrances to the ditch have on ramps - and don't confuse them with merge lanes. You are either on the ramp or IN one of the lanes of traffic. I often wondered if that is where the 0-60 in ten seconds was born. It's not like up north here where we amble down a ramp and have plenty of extra lane to merge into the traffic flow. Nope. You hit the end of a Detroit ramp doing 60-70 mph and get your fanny over - or else - because there is no more ramp. I loved it.
Anyhow, I digressed there. Back to the trip. While in Traverse City getting my future eagle eyes checked out I wanted to test out this new knee and get in some exercise so we went to the Dennos Museum. It's a small but mighty place with beautiful gallery spaces. They have a children's area, a great Inuit gallery, sculpture gardens, and then several galleries with rotating exhibits that come in. This time they had an art quilts exhibit, and a glass exhibit from the collections of Habitat Galleries.
I don't have any current work finished as I rehab but I thought you might enjoy a little inspiration from my outing.
Shame on me for not getting the artists name but this is a beautiful cast sculpture that is about twice as tall as I have photographed. It's title is "Sonya" - which stuck with me because it's my DIL's name.
Section of the art quilts by Katie Pasquini Masopust. The main gallery was covered in exquisite art quilts this is a section of a large one that was so beautiful. She used her thread like pencil and it was so lush with painterly qualities you didn't realie it was fabric until you were close. What a great exhibit.
Okey Dokey all you wonderful people in the blog world. The knee surgery is 3 weeks completed and I start physical therapy outside the house next week. Let it not be said that I'm not a glutton for medical punishment so while I'm working on this knee I scheduled cataracts removed from my eyes. Yikes! One eye down and one to go at the end of next month. I'm looking at it this way - - - by the next Bead and Button I ought to be able to boot scoot up and down those aisles and with this newly acquired visual acuity I won't miss a single goody in any booth.
While nursing the knee I did a few Tila Beads in Elizabeth's pattern and tomorrow I'll get a photo of them. Thank goodness for auto-focus right now. The eye won't let me do any detail work easily but that too will resume in about a week. YES!
Anyhoo - I missed you all and it's great to be back - talk soon.
I thought I'd better check in before everyone wonders where I went. July 30th was a total knee replacement fro the left knee. Yikes, they grind bone - and give you lots of titanium with a plastic pad for cushioning. At the moment I look like franken knee - I haven't counted the staples but there are a lot of them. They are thorough and careful at Henry Ford Hospital. I was hospitalized for two days after the surgery and had wonderful Nurses - Occupational Therapists - and Physical Therapists. And that doesn't even cover the doctor.
This will have to be short - the pain keeps coming and I can't seem to concentrate to easily yet. I'll get there and I'll start more regular posts as soon as I can.
The classic Disney animated movie, The Little Mermaid, is actually based on a classic novel by Hans Christian Andersen. It tells the story of how a princess of the mermaids wants to become a human after being smitten with the human prince whom she saved from drowning in the ocean. The evil sea witch Ursula grants her wish in exchange for her voice and tells her that she can only stay human if she receives a kiss of true love from the prince. She agrees and is turned into a human. The evil sea witch tries to stop this from happening, leaving it up to the princess to win the prince’s love and stay human forever.
Mermaids have always been a topic of legend and folklore, with most countries surrounded by water having their own version of the mystical creature. Mermaids typically come in the form of half man and half fish. Their upper bodies are like that of a human being, but they have fins like a fish. They live under the water and according to legend, lure boats into rocks with their beautiful voices. Many stories passed down by sailors talks about a seeing a beautiful woman in the middle of the sea and how she disappears if they get to close to her.
Many real animals actually do resemble the mermaid. For example, the dugong or the sea cow could look like a mermaid in dark waters. There have also been many stories of fishermen claiming to have captured a real mermaid, only to discover that what they caught were only uncommon species of fish. Whether they are real or not, stories about mermaids will always fascinate us. They are only one of the many mysteries of the world’s great oceans.
Newts, as creatures, have long been associated with the lore of witches and warlocks, often described as “essential ingredients” in the making of secret potions and spells.
The supposed subject of a Pixar and Disney animated feature, an-on-the-works movie titled Newt was scheduled for production and release some two years back, set as a romantic comedy telling the story of how the last two blue-footed newts in the world came to save their species.
The movie, however, didn’t mature into a featured release, but its cancellation hasn’t done anything bad for newts in general.
Linked with the salamander family, newts are aquatic amphibians found in Asia, Europe and in North America. As with most amphibians, newts go through the developmental metamorphosis amphibians are known for, with an aquatic larva stage and a terrestrial juvenile stage, which is followed by its adult stage.
With lizard-like bodies, newts either spend most of their days in aquatic environments and ecosystems, or live as “land lizards” only going to the water when mating season comes. A number of newts are also known to live “semi-aquatic, semi-terrestrial” lives, taking the time to either hang out in the water or stay on dry ground in balanced installments.
Bearing characteristics similar with salamanders, newts sport semi-permeable skins which aren’t as smooth as those found in salamanders, and also have a limb structure that is similar with salamanders.
One interesting thing about newts is their ability to regenerate body parts which are lost due to injury from predatory attacks and/or accidents. In most cases, a newt could regenerate a lost limb and also has the ability to regenerate lost upper and/or lower jaws. They can also regenerate eyes, hearts, intestines and spinal cords.
This regeneration ability is one of the reasons why the newt is often used as “essential ingredients” in the making of secret potions and spells (eye of newt, anyone?).
As creatures with regenerative abilities, modern science has yet been able to exactly define what gives newts this edge over other creatures, but as baffled as science is (to date) with the newt, newts continue to be unique creatures under Mother Nature’s care.
In the movie Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole, brother owls are kidnapped and taken by an evil owl king who wants to create an army of owls. One of the brothers escapes this fate and searches for the legendary Guardians, owls whose stories are told in myth, to ask their help in stopping the evil owl king. The brothers are separated, with each choosing their respective sides in the ensuing battle.
The animated film perhaps stands out for featuring hundreds of different species of owls, wonderful creatures best known for hunting at night. These nocturnal birds are known for their large, expressive eyes that shine in the dark. The large eyes of owls serve a utilitarian purpose, helping them see in the dark, especially when hunting at night.
Owls are carnivorous, living mainly off small birds, lizards, bugs and smaller mammals like mice. They have very good hearing and can turn their heads 270 degrees around.
Owls come in different shapes and sizes, with some just a few inches tall with others having wingspans that reach up to 10 feet. These birds of prey also come in different colors, depending on the environment and the species of the owl. Another characteristic that owls are known to have is their familiar sound or call. They make a “hoot” sound when they are excited or threatened. It’s also a form of communication with other owls.
Interestingly enough, owls have always been shrouded in mystery, perhaps due to their nocturnal behavior. In the past, these birds were linked to the supernatural and the occult, a sad label since they are actually harmless. In fact, if a person gets too close to them, they usually just fly off to another tree and stay as far away as possible. They are very solitary creatures, which means that they prefer to be alone. You can find owls everywhere around the world, from tropical islands to cold and snowy countries.
I couldn't help it...I've been working on the torch and on some clay. With all the new parts they just put in me I'm feeling a little like Frankenstein. I am also temporarily as clumsy and with one eye having cataract surgery and the other one waiting until September 27th my spacial vision is for crap. My glasses are useless and it will be until mid- October before they can fit me with a new pair. Mostly I'm just laughing this off but I know there are times I have this contorted look on my face because people look at me like I've been in a car accident or something. I occasionally have drop foot and feel like I'm dragging it Quasimodo style through the grocery store. I must be a sight...what are ya' gonna do? I should put a little orange or something in my hair for Halloween and then watch them stare at the Walmart. I had the best fun one year when I did hot pink...
I’ve only shown a very few of Sharon’s pieces here but have included a link to her site. I wish you could all see the process by which she works her wax for casting. It’s simply amazing how minute and meticulous she is. Every scale is done in detail and put on one at a time. I know she has a Facebook fan page where you can see her works in progress – I’m sure a lucky duck that I get to see them close up and talk them over with her. If you stop by her Etsy, Blog, or web page tell her Hello – she is so nice and will enjoy hearing what you think of her work. Maybe even tell her what you’d like to see next – you never know when it might turn up.
